


Amnesia

by Bibliotecaria_D



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-08
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2018-01-08 00:13:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 24,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1126061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bibliotecaria_D/pseuds/Bibliotecaria_D
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pride and war drove Pharma to break his medical oaths, but a single choice made differently brought the consequences down on Tarn.  He couldn’t be any happier.  The Autobots still aren’t sure what to think about that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One: Ethics of War

Pride and war drove Pharma to break his medical oaths, but a single choice made differently brought the consequences down on Tarn. He couldn’t be any happier. The Autobots still aren’t sure what to think about that. 

**Title:** Amnesia  
 **Warning:** Nonconsensual medical procedure (within the context of war), definite dubcon as a result  
 **Rating:** R?  
 **Continuity:** MTMTE AU  
 **Characters:** Pharma, Tarn, Ambulon, First Aid, Prowl, Ratchet, Rung  
 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors.  
 **Motivation (Prompt):** FelixFellow made a gorgeous picture of Pharma kissing Tarn. I had to reason out how this could happen. Things got a bit out of my control.

**[* * * * *]  
Part One: “Ethics of War”  
[* * * * *]**

War was a vise. It compressed everyone stuck in its jaws, squeezing them until desperation caused them to do things they otherwise wouldn’t. It wasn’t fair to say it was a measure of a mech what he chose to discard. Vises had jaws because they were mouths. War preyed on mechs, and sometimes the situation did as much to wring certain bits free as a mech’s own choices did.

Pharma’s pride might strangle him yet, but he’d been trapped by war. It was a toss-up if he’d be hung or crushed first. 

He had been stranded inside the Decepticon Justice Division’s territory, head of an emergency clinic whose ward manager was on the List. Prowl refused to reassign either Pharma or Ambulon. Pharma had struck a deal with the leader of the D.J.D., but it had become increasingly clear that the bargain was a lost cause. Tarn took and took, changing the terms of the agreement according to his sadistic whims. If not for that unexpected addiction of his -- Pharma counted himself lucky he’d spotted the twitchy signs of a transformation addiction before Tarn fired the final shot -- the Delphi Medical Clinic would have been razed to the ground long ago. As it was, the D.J.D. demanded more of Pharma that the doctor was willing to give.

T-cogs from the already dead were a disgusting price to pay, but Pharma could justify that price. The patients were already dead. Grotesque as it was to use their parts in a blackmarket dealing like this, his conscious only gave a twinge when he salvaged T-cogs from bodies. T-cogs from the living, however, backed him into a moral corner he couldn’t escape with a minute of logical thought.

The surgeon sat at his desk, wings low and optics pressed against his clenched fists. His elbows dug into the desk harder and harder.

Was there anything about this situation that didn’t scream claustrophobia?

He was on his own. Prowl wouldn’t change his assignment, and anyway, Delphi was _his_ clinic. He’d smelt himself before conceding he needed help.

It didn’t help that the last message from Autobot Command had concealed a subtle threat to replace him with Ratchet. Anything -- _anything_ \-- that Ratchet could do, Pharma could do. Maybe not better, but he would slag himself trying.

He lifted his face from his hands and glowered at the far wall. Ratchet would not take over this clinic from him like a savior sent from Prowl to lift Delphi from the Pit. Anything Ratchet _could_ do, Pharma _would_ do. Provide medical care for the miners, save his ward manager, confound the D.J.D. in their own Primus’ forsaken territory, win at Tarn’s sick game. Anything.

One slender hand laid delicately atop a file of a critical patient. The mech was one step from death. Pharma was one T-cog short of quota for Tarn’s arbitrarily set amount for ‘tribute’ this month. It would be simple, so simple, to let war chew up his medical ethics. One slip of his oaths to preserve life and guide the unhealthy of mind and body, and he’d meet Tarn’s price to spare the clinic. Just once, and the patient might not make it, anyway. A nudge from Pharma was only tipping the scales a touch. Death had the mech mostly in its arms already.

He could see how giving way once might degrade his ability to resist justifying murder a second time, but Pharma was proud of his strength.

Perhaps too proud.

He hesitated, troubled optics locked on the patient’s file. He wasn’t normally one for doubting himself, but oaths were important because breaking them carried consequences. It might not matter how proud he was in the aftermath. The strength of a medic’s word came from the involatile nature of his oaths. Break them once, and their power shattered. His own pride could trap him in a vise after that. What he could do to himself was no worse than what pressures war brought on him. Pride could drive him mad, like punishment for broken promises.

If he let it.

Pharma straightened slowly, drawing himself up as if facing down an invisible audience of peers, enemies, and himself. Ratchet, Tarn, Prowl, the Decepticons, the Autobots here at the mines. All of them. His shoulders went back, his wings lifted, and he tilted his chin up in a haughty sneer down his nose at them. He would not lower himself to killing a patient because of pressure from an arrogant slag-eating boltcutter like _Tarn_. If he was going to break his medical oaths because of this blasted war, then he would do it on his terms, and his alone. He would not be Tarn’s puppet, and he wouldn’t be shown up by Ratchet.

His lips turned down at the corners, and he turned on his desk console. There was a way to turn Tarn’s deal against him. The ‘Con was far too confident in his ability to control Pharma. So confident that he’d walk right into a trap if the surgeon had the nerve to set it. It would have to be specialized, fine-tuned to take down Tarn and Tarn alone. Something more general would take time Pharma didn’t have, but beheading the D.J.D. would cause enough chaos that it’d at least buy him some room to maneuver. A virus. He could make a virus. A highly infectious one meant to spread via something the Autobots could control. 

Hmmm. That idea had potential, and he set aside for later. In the future, if there was one, he’d start researching the idea of warfare via cyberbiology. Yes, it would break his oaths to preserve and protect, but no more so than the plans he began to draft for a mech-specific poison. A paralyzing agent strong enough to knock out an entire unit, based off of sedatives used to slow fuel pump rate, and a whole cocktail of common medications tweaked to target the most vulnerable internal parts of a mech. Useless on the outside, but he could get inside Tarn’s guard. Tarn himself would make sure of that, and then Tarn’s body would turn into the weapon Pharma lacked to take down someone that powerful. 

Prowl wouldn’t help the Autobots of Messatine. Well, then. Pharma would. But he would do it his way. He would use his skill to _fight_ to save his clinic, not merely to hide a murder and extend a rigged deal. If his oaths had to be broken, then he would make the breakage a weapon he could use. 

Thus, the smallest moment of self-reflection changed what the vise of war crushed -- or rather, whom its jaws closed on.

Thirty hours later, the patient still lived. Despite that fact, Pharma’s hand was steady as it keyed in a comm. frequency no Autobot should know. “Tarn? I have your package.” A smile crossed the surgeon’s face as he looked upon the results of thirty hours of concentrated, rage-fueled, brilliant but broken effort. Something under his angry pride ached sharply for what he’d sacrificed to make this. 

But the patient still lived. The end justified the means. This was surgical removal of a disease to save someone, really. A medic’s oaths were not so lightly broken, and if there was a chance to save a life, a medic was honor-bound to take that chance. It didn’t matter whose life, or who the medic was. War was a vise, and snatching a spark out of its pitiless jaws was sometimes the only victory a medic could celebrate amidst the crushing defeat. The patient had made it, and Pharma was proud of saving the mech, even if it wasn’t the conventional skillset of a surgeon he’d practiced.

“Where and when do you want me to meet you this time?” The final time. “Make it soon. I’m a busy mech.” Death waited for no mech, but it would be right on time for Tarn. Pharma would make certain of it.

At least, that was the plan. Plans did have a tendency not to last past the first engagement in war. All that pressure changed things, even minds. Maybe especially them. 

Pharma stood in the snow and stared down at Tarn. The massive Decepticon convulsed, body destroying itself the way Tarn had threatened to destroy him only minutes ago. Pain wracked the tank in long seizures that weakened each time. Heat blasted off purple and black armor as internal errors fried him alive.

Watching this should have felt like triumph. It should have felt good. It should have been a vindictive pleasure to watch the Decepticon who’d tortured and demeaned him for so long get his just desserts. This was what he could report to Prowl, and he could be proud that he’d won. He’d _won_.

In the back of his mind, Ratchet scowled at him. Had he?

Pharma’s hands curled into fists. Satisfaction curdled in his spark when Tarn choked out a garbled scream. This was what he was proud of? Death, torture, and broken oaths? This was everything a medic resisted when war pressed in. Although, it was Tarn, and Tarn deserved every powerplant hitch sputtering pain through him. Didn’t he?

Ratchet wouldn’t approve. Prowl would. The soldiers at the mine would. No medic true to his oaths would.

There was a mech dying in front of a surgeon. There was only one victory to be had, here.

“I hope you remember this,” Pharma hissed at Tarn as he fell to his knees in the snow. “Remember that **I** saved you. If you remember nothing else, you recycled tin can, remember **me**.”

His fingers paused in prying the Decepticon’s chest open. 

…oh.

Oh, now that was an idea. Difficult to pull off, complicated as the Pit, but Tarn would live. Technically. If Pharma could do it. It’d be a compromise between ethics and war, nothing more, but why couldn’t that enough? He could do it, and neither Prowl nor Ratchet would be able to naysay his decision. 

Pharma laughed in relief as built-up pressure suddenly released. He bent back to work with a will.

**[* * * * *]**

_[ **A/N:** Yes, it turned into a fic on its own. I think there’s a wordcount these things pass that trigger the changeover in my head from ‘ficlets’ to ‘fic.’ I’m fond of the ficlet nature of each chapter, but they are much easier to fit into the plot for this story. They’re easier to sit down and write than anything more complicated.]_


	2. Part Two: "First Kiss"

**Title:** Amnesia  
 **Warning:** Nonconsensual medical procedure (within the context of war), definite dubcon as a result  
 **Rating:** R?  
 **Continuity:** MTMTE AU  
 **Characters:** Pharma, Tarn, Ambulon, First Aid, Prowl, Ratchet  
 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors.  
 **Motivation (Prompt):** FelixFellow made a gorgeous picture of Pharma kissing Tarn. I had to reason out how this could happen. Things got a bit out of my control.

**[* * * * *]  
Part Two: “First Kiss”  
[* * * * *]**

He was…Tarn.

Tarn? Like the city? Tarn. Yes. He was Tarn. That seemed slightly strange, but he had more urgent things to worry about.

The alerts lit his HUD a blinding red and blue pulse. Words scrolled down it so fast he had trouble reading them, and the smears of color left after-images on his optic sensors that blotted out the white snow all around him. He frowned and squinted reflexively, narrowing his optics against the glare of snow. That didn’t much to slow the computer screen output, but it gave him less input to sort through. 

Parsing through the alerts caused an unexpectedly sharp ache in his inside of his helm, like a recently voided cyst twanging as the edges collapsed inward. What had _happened?_ The list of affected systems appeared to have no bottom, and his alarm grew from a fuzzy just-woken thing to a towering fear of the unknown.

Weapons systems: offline. Powerplant status: idling, awaiting kickstart. Emergency generator output: 15% and climbing toward kickstart trigger point. Fuel system error: 25% pressure but climbing. Coolant tank level: 20% and falling. System logs showed heavy stress caused by the fuel system error, depressing nonessential systems as all power rerouted to keeping his core processor and spark-vital systems fueled as his powerplant plunged into standby. From the temperature gauge’s log, a manual disconnect had been all that’d stopped it from pumping a massive overdose of power into him, frying his circuitry and burning him from the inside out. 

Immediately after disconnect, his coolant system had been unlocked and rerouted to douse the overheated portions of him. Had he actually caught fire? He wasn’t getting any damage reports, but the picture he was piecing together from various system logs made him think the emergency procedure to cool him might have included beating out flames. There were coolant lines reporting complete removal from his extremities, and he was getting errors pinging back from circuit boards that had missing wiring. 

The fall from extreme heat to emergency cooling had led to several key joints freezing. The cold external temperature had locked up many of his more vulnerable internals as fluids crystallized, clogging or uncomfortably expanding tubes. As fast as his body had heated up, the snow and ice around him had tried to freeze him.

He’d nearly died, Tarn realized. His sensor network finally finished tracing his missing components, but the battle damage report came back clean. He had no buckled plating or snapped cables to cause him pain if he moved. However, it reported that he hadn’t been so lucky prior to waking. The burn-out shock had hit him in a cascade failure that had spiked pain off the meter. It’d been temporary, but it’d knocked him out. He must have been in agony for the brief minutes before merciful statis lock.

He must have been, but he didn’t remember. 

A groan came from deep in his chest, bypassing his vocalizer for sheer, body-level complaining as stiffened joints and cold wires protested increased usage. Every percentage point ticking up on his generator output _hurt_. Electricity ran hot through half-frozen circuitry. 

Tarn reset his optics and gasped, holding the icy air in his mouth for a long second to warm it before letting his main intake fans suck it down his throat. He still shuddered as the deep breath chilled him from the inside out. Parts of his air filter froze, moisture from thawing systems inside meeting frigid air coming in. Move. He had to move, or he’d freeze right back up. 

What had brought him online? System logs showed steady decline until a sudden uptick ten minutes ago. His sensor network --

Startled, he managed to lift his arms almost off the snow before losing the fight to gravity. His open torso armor twitched, trying to close. He’d been opened up from throat to pelvic span! No _wonder_ he was so slagging cold it hurt! Internal systems were directly fighting external temperature suppression! Which has likely saved him when he’d been burning up, but now he had the opposite problem.

And...ah, no, that was a sensor ghost. His helm hadn’t been opened. The access alert vanished as soon as he noticed it, and Tarn dismissed it from his thoughts. He had enough to worry about.

Shunting the HUD alerts aside one by one, he widened his optics and tried to see anything against the too-bright sky and the too-reflective snow. His fingers twitched, and it took all his concentration to flex his ankles. Move. He had to move. He had to close his chest and find shelter to recover in.

Where was he? He didn’t know where he was beyond the general location of Planet Messatine. No context. Just the planet name and some facts that didn’t hook up correctly in his mind. The connective data had been deleted, the information about why he was there and what had happened. He tried to access a map of the area and had to give up because he couldn’t supply general location coordinates for where he was. The maps were there. He just didn’t know where on them he was. 

Red and blue coalesced out of the optic-searing white landscape, and Tarn’s optics started to focus on it right when his generator reached its trigger point. It coughed loudly as the kickstart tripped. Electricity stabbed in a hot lightning bolt from generator to powerplant, and the tank arched and grunted under the mule-kick of his body going to full power. The abrupt rush of power hitting cold systems _hurt_ in a way trickles of increased electricity couldn’t compare to. Tarn gasped but refused to scream, vocalizer screeping painfully as the pressure to cry out built behind it. 

Exposed by opened armor, his systems made noise for him. A hoarse screech came from his fuel pump and minor gears as ice crushed out from the moving parts. His fingers dug into the ground, so cold he almost couldn’t feel the difference between his metal and the snow. _Ow_.

“You’re awake. About time.” 

That voice. 

Through the pain, that voice smacked Tarn’s mind to attention. It sent a blaze of flaming hot _need_ down his backstruts. His temperature gauge bobbled alarmingly. Chilled plating hissed as select systems went directly from statis into excited hammering. Cold, sluggish fuel slushed through his lines furiously, suddenly pushed along by the frantic rhythm of a fuel pump responding to nothing more than a few brusque words.

“Pharma?” someone croaked, and it took the raspy pain of ice-crusted air filters in his throat to realize it’d been him. He’d said -- “Pharma,” he repeated, head aching far more than a moment ago. The hollow throb of before became a solid pounding certainty that --

That --

The blue and red shape became a dearly familiar helm. The blotches of color against the painful white world resolved into medical symbols. The sight of them soothed as much as they aroused him. A tension Tarn hadn’t even been aware of eased into abrupt relief and a slow, mounting desire. The vague thought that he should feel ashamed by his rampant arousal at the sight of common medical insignia lost out before the flood of needy bliss. He saw them on cute winglets, and his stiff hands opened and closed on the snow in a compulsive desire to touch. To stroke. To rest on and fondle every inch of sleek metal until the nervous flicking -- he wasn’t sure why he knew they’d flick out of his grip -- stopped at last. 

Then he could close his fingers gently around them. He could hold them until flight sensors registered the rush of electricity through his hands as flowing air, until Pharma hummed contentedly in his arms because being held felt like flying. Until he coaxed the jet to relax. Until that prim posture melted into a contented slump in his arms, and that patrician nose nuzzled into his chest plating.

Tarn’s spark squeezed into a hot ball of something more tender than lust at the thought. Yes. His systems riled quickly on a rising tide of purely physical craving, but the idea of folding this mech in his arms and keeping him safe melted the ice into a puddle of sappy happiness deep in his gut.

Pharma, the chief medic of the Delphic Emergency Medical Clinic, the most talented surgeon he’d ever heard of. Pharma. Oh, Pharma.

Tarn reset his optics and smiled dopily upward, not caring in the least that his internal systems were exposed and chugging along in full view. Pharma must have restarted his body after the shock set the cascade failures in motion. He’d have burnt up or frozen to death, powered down into terminal statis out here. He’d have died but for Pharma’s intervention. Of course. Tarn could handle threats of violence or force, but Pharma could save him from what couldn’t be defeated by fusion cannons or his voice.

“What happened?” he asked muzzily, but it came out too thick to be readily understood.

“It’s not important,” Pharma said, apparently able to understand him despite that, or maybe he’d anticipated the question. Tarn didn’t know.

He also didn’t know if there were any kisses before this one. Primus, he hoped he’d remember them someday. He theorized that there must have been prior kisses, because the good doctor had all the confidence in the universe when that beloved face leaned over him. The jet seized the edge of his mask almost violently and yanked his helm up out of the snow to kiss like his life depended on it. Tarn made a small sound of surprise and tried to press further into Pharma’s hold, mouth parting behind his mask as if he could meet the lips it kept from him.

Air blasted down onto Tarn from shoulder vents, reeking of hot metal and fear, and a sinking sense of dismay clutched his tanks. It must have been a close one. 

“I didn’t mean to worry you,” he tried to say, but the cold air brought Pharma back to his senses. 

Fear disappeared as if it’d never been, replaced by ice and pride in a swirl of wind. The hands on either side of Tarn’s mask shoved him right back into the snow, and he grunted when his helm slammed down. The hot press of a kiss his lips could _nearly_ feel on the other side of his mask left, and Pharma drew away. Tarn’s vocalizer whined thinly in protest. 

Struggling against the ice still crackling in his joints and the weakness seeping out of him a percentage point at a time, Tarn managed to lift one hand after him. Pharma jolted when he laid it on the surgeon’s comparatively thin forearm, and blue optics eyed it warily like a skittish technimal. Whoever had taught his precious jet to fear touch needed to die. He would find that mech and kill him slowly.

Later, however. When he felt a little less like recycled slag. 

The prone tank cleared his filters with an effort. “Pharma,” he rasped, “please don’t be angry at me.”

Blue optics blinked wide, that expressive face slack with shock. It firmed into a flash of satisfaction, optics glinting hard. Before Tarn could think about it, his senses were once again overwhelmed by the scent and color and sleek metal of his favorite flyer. Pharma’s lips pressed firmly over the mouth slit of his mask, and Tarn eagerly inhaled the damp cloud of his breath. It tasted hot and used. He savored it, mouth open as he strained to complete the kiss.

Tarn forlornly hoped that the mask wasn’t new. He wasn’t sure he could bear it if he had, at some mysterious point in the past, kissed his surgeon back.

**[* * * * *]**


	3. Part Three: "Where were they their first time?"

**Title:** Amnesia  
 **Warning:** Nonconsensual medical procedure (within the context of war), definite dubcon as a result   
**Rating:** R?  
 **Continuity:** MTMTE AU   
**Characters:** Pharma, Tarn, Ambulon, First Aid, Prowl, Ratchet  
 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors.  
 **Motivation (Prompt):** FelixFellow made a gorgeous picture of Pharma kissing Tarn. I had to reason out how this could happen. Things got a bit out of my control.

**[* * * * *]  
Part Three: ”Where were they their first time?”  
[* * * * *]**

Pharma _took_ him. Right there and then, hard, while Tarn’s systems spun up to melt the snow around them in an expanding pool of slush and water. Although it strangely felt like the surgeon gave him far more than he took despite Tarn being under him, chest open and vulnerable to the clever hands that delved inside. He wouldn’t allow Tarn to return the pleasure. He simply smiled down in slightly manic triumph while the tank squirmed, spark throbbing in his hands and that weaponized vocalizer rendered useless by the smallest caress of his fingers. Tarn spat static between strangled howls pleading for completion, and Pharma gave him everything in return.

Prowl stamped him with red, much later, and he was proud to receive it in front of a crowd of hostile optics because of the one blue gaze that mattered. It was the sharp rake of blue fingers down his treads that he always treasured as his introduction to the Autobot ranks. The other Autobots could mutter behind his back all they liked, debating whether or not he’d earned the brand. Pharma had made a decision out there in the snow, and his decision was the only one that mattered to Tarn. He didn’t remember anything earlier, and baptism by overload had a deliciously forbidden taste to it.

They began in secret, for all that Pharma didn’t spare a second on subtlety when he brought Tarn to Delphi. Ambulon and First Aid met them at the door, weapons primed, and the only reason neither they nor Tarn shot was because Pharma’s hand lingered in obvious claim beneath the tank’s elbow. Tarn had been wildly conscious of that small contact. The whole walk to the clinic, his surgeon had graced him with a brush of fingers on his forearm, a possessive pet down a tread. It’d fired Tarn up again, but the hidden hint of wonder on Pharma’s face had left him trying to reassure his flyer that yes, this was real. He was here. He was his.

Wonder and doubt faded and darkened to a kind of self-satisfied greed as they walked. Tarn had looked at Pharma’s widening smile and fallen in love twice over. Once for the sheer talent that’d saved him, brought him back, and once more for this marvelous mech.

They’d made another puddle of slush out there in the wilds of Messatine. Tarn didn’t remember anything before waking up in the snow, but now he had very clear memories of what Pharma could do to him. It hadn’t taken much pressure from the surgeon to get the tank to pop his chestplates again. Slag, he’d done it almost before the smaller mech settled astride his midriff and drew a suggestive line from chin downward.

So the hand under his elbow restrained him as effectively as chains. It reminded him of their activities only breems earlier, activities that had left bright blue paint transfers on the edges of his chest panels. He wore them proudly. The two Autobot medical aides gawked at their boss guiding him toward the clinic as if evidence of interfacing scandalized them speechless. He held his head high and glared at them haughtily. They’d better get used to it.

The one not shaking himself to pieces scraped up the bearings to speak. “Ph-Pharma -- “

“Tarn’s come to join us,” the surgeon said, rich and satisfied. The hand on Tarn’s elbow tightened. “I expect him to be treated with the respect due to any Autobot.”

Because of course that’s what he was. A brief wash of curiosity ran over him as questions without answers were brought to the forefront of his mind. Where had he been that he had to come here to join them? Another base? The...mines? There were mines on the planet. He knew that. Had he been assigned to the defensive outpost and was now joining the clinic’s staff instead?

It didn’t matter, however. It only mattered that he was here now, and there wasn’t a force on Messatine that could tear him away from Pharma’s side. Two Autobots wielding piddling weapons didn’t stand a chance.

The questions dissipated as quickly as they’d come when the hand under his elbow ran down to his hand and tugged. Obedient, Tarn bent down. His appearance of aloofness failed the moment he looked toward his beloved surgeon. He could _feel_ his optics soften into an adoring stare. That would do his reputation no good whatsoever with those two gun-toting idiots standing in the door watching him, but who cared? He certainly didn’t.

He couldn’t stop himself. He didn’t want to stop himself. Pharma’s other hand rose to cup the side of his helm in a gentle hold that he immediately leaned into, practically nuzzling into that small hand. Tarn’s heavy tank engine revved, betraying how his spark jumped at the small contact. Purring, Tarn sank to one knee and gave the lovely jet his undivided attention. Let the other two Autobots attack him while he was distracted. They might wound him, but that was a price he was willing to pay. 

“You’re here to protect me, isn’t that right?” Pharma murmured, and Tarn’s spark _sang_. Yes. _Yes_. He couldn’t put into words how having a place as this mech’s protector shot thrills of joy and pride through him! “I feel that the Decepticons are a threat to my safety.”

He would do any and everything to make Pharma feel safe. He brought the relatively tiny hand clasped in his own up to his face, pressing it to the mask over his mouth. “Not anymore,” the tank promised in his deepest tones, projecting reassurance.

It was a toss-up who was more shocked when Pharma pulled his hands away and slapped Tarn across the mask in a resounding smack. Ambulon and First Aid flinched, diving behind the pitiful shelter of the blast doors on reflex. Tarn’s head swung around under the force of the hit, and there it remained for a long moment, mask and optics hidden from sight.

“I said never to do that,” Pharma reminded him coolly.

Shame kept the tank turned away, optics now downcast in regret. The vibrato left his voice. “I apologize.” When he slowly brought his head back around, he bowed his head before Pharma. He kept his vocalizer tuned flat and silently cursed habits he didn’t even remember having. “It won’t happen again.”

First Aid and Ambulon peeked around the blast doors. They seemed stunned that Pharma was still alive. They said nothing when he stalked inside, Tarn following meekly at his heels.

That silence seemed the best option when it came to surgeon and soldier, after that. Nobody ever asked about their trysts, no matter how obvious Pharma’s constant pushes and prods were. He made no attempt to hide the continual bits of possessive contact. He blatantly guided and claimed Tarn in front of one and all, and the tank encouraged it. He welcomed it. He melted under a heavy look, much less a light touch from Pharma’s hands.

First Aid and Ambulon knew what kind of relationship they had just from the way Tarn’s optics followed their boss around. The burn of lust radiated off him at times, he ran so hot. Yet the open secret stayed silent.

Pharma never said he couldn’t talk about it, but what the jet gifted him could be easily taken away. Pharma had held him down in the snow and given him what he begged for. He made Tarn shriek in blissful agony under his hands -- but he’d stopped when Tarn tried to speak. Noise was allowed. Silent adoration from a distance was well received. Let him touch the surgeon without Pharma’s permission, however, and he’d find himself shuddering through withdrawal. 

Blue optics above him would narrow and bleach in the light of his teased spark. It made Pharma look cruel. It made the surgeon unbearably beautiful, like a knife honed sharp enough to cut air molecules. The mech could cut Tarn deeply if handled incorrectly, and only experience gave the tank guidelines in how to hold his lover. 

So. Silence it was, because Tarn never quite knew what he’d do or say to make his lover turn a cold shoulder and turn into a superior officer again. Pharma’s stinging words hurt worse than any lash when turned on him. 

But when Pharma smiled at him, it seared a pleasure through him that wasn’t just physical. The jet held him down, _took_ him, but Tarn writhed in delicious torment under him because his surgeon gave and gave. He wasn’t allowed to give in return, and that was a delicious torment.

“Keep your hands down.”

“Stop moving.”

“I told you to be **quiet**.”

And Primus help him if he tried to hum a bit of his pleasure into Pharma’s own spark in return for all he was given. Feverish promises to never do that again, he didn’t remember any better, please forgive him, come _back_ \--

The ice had been a bitter, lonely place when Pharma threatened to leave him there. 

Silence was best. 

When the surgeon rose from the bed, neither spoke of what happened on it. Tarn watched him go and kept his mouth shut. He held their open secret close, like a treasure nobody else dared touch, because it was the only thing Pharma let him hold on to.

**[* * * * *]**


	4. Part Four: "unable to meet each other's optics"

**Title:** Amnesia  
**Warning:** Nonconsensual medical procedure (within the context of war), definite dubcon as a result  
**Rating:** R?  
**Continuity:** MTMTE AU  
**Characters:** Pharma, Tarn, Ambulon, First Aid, Prowl, Ratchet  
**Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors.  
**Motivation (Prompt):** FelixFellow made a gorgeous picture of Pharma kissing Tarn. I had to reason out how this could happen. Things got a bit out of my control.

  
**[* * * * *]**  
Part Four: ”unable to meet each other’s optics”  
**[* * * * *]**  


At first, Tarn stayed in the office because the surgeon wanted to keep him under observation. He spent days restlessly wandering around looking at things on the walls or staring out the window while Pharma shuffled patient files and sent out endless messages to Autobot Command.

Then he stayed in the office because everyone and their commanding officer wanted to talk with him. Pharma still sent messages and fielded countless calls from the mining outpost, but Tarn started to be asked for directly. He’d lost count of how many times he’d been called away from zoning out by the window in order to go around behind the desk and stand at attention in front of the video pick-up. Autobot Command apparently couldn’t to believe he was there at Delphi, sound of body if not of mind. 

Prowl’s interrogation was the toughest to endure, just in terms of blunt lack of tact. Everyone else carefully danced around direct questions about what he did or didn’t remember, trying to spare him the helpless, continual repetition of, “I don’t know.” They were all so cautious, afraid of bringing up trauma he didn’t have a single memory of.

Prowl, on the other hand, outright asked the same question in twenty different ways. It wound Tarn into an angry knot of frustration that kept twisting tighter and tighter until he finally snapped.

“I don’t know!” he burst out, slamming his fist down on the desk. He glared at the console screen as if he could somehow make the calm mech on the other side listen at last. “You can ask all you want, but that doesn’t change the fact that I. Don’t. **Remember!** I don’t know, so stop wasting my time!” 

Prowl watched his outburst, barely reacting to the way the much larger mech shook in restrained anger. Maybe making him lose control was what he’d wanted to see. Tarn really didn’t know and couldn’t care less, although he’d be even angrier if the glitch had done this on purpose.

After a moment, the tactician inclined his head to the side, at the surgeon who sat on the desk chair pushed almost out of sight of the video pick-up. “I see. Should I call back when he can conduct himself in a more professional manner? I would hate to think of his...recovery…as a threat to you or your facility.”

Utterly mortified, Tarn looked to the side just in time to catch Pharma straightening up from what had to be a reflexive cringe. From...from a violent gesture done by a much larger mech. Oh frag. He _knew_ better! Primus forgive him, he’d made his beloved surgeon flash back to whatever callous idiot had abused him. 

He felt like a heel already, but then Pharma refused to even acknowledge the stifled little noise or half-extended hand. Not the time for an abject apology, it seemed.

The surgeon lifted his chin and gathered his dignity. “N-no.” He reset his vocalizer and tried that again. “No, that won’t be necessary.” No, it truly wouldn’t be, because even as he eased his wings down, the tank at his side suffered through six kinds of silent repentance. “That is, I’m sure Tarn will restrain himself.”

Tarn leaned away unconsciously when blue optics flashed up at him and that voice he adored dropped to a growl. “Prowl is the **Second-in-Command** of the entire Autobot faction. Perhaps you should keep that in mind, soldier!”

“Yessir!” His body snapped to rigid attention before his mind even caught up to the words. Technically, Pharma didn’t outrank him -- he thought, anyway -- but comparative rank didn’t matter right now. Soldiers didn’t disobey the heads of medical facilities, especially not ones of facilities they were currently admitted to. They certainly didn’t embarrass those heads in front of the Autobot Second, who outranked _both_ of them.

Shame burnt Tarn to a crisp. His poor behavior reflected on Pharma right now, and shouting at Prowl qualified as insubordination at the very least. He might not remember much of anything, but he knew duty inside and out.

He swallowed a lump of pride and fixed his optics just above the vidscreen. “I apologize, sir. That was out of line. It won’t happen again.” He’d answer forty more questions asking the same blasted thing, and he wouldn’t complain. It was his duty.

The Autobot on the screen studied him an agonizing minute more before nodding slowly. “Apology accepted.”

“Excuse me, Prowl.” Pharma slid out of his chair and stepped out of sight of the video pick-up, venting deeply to calm himself. Tarn’s optics tracked him, although he didn’t move. Was the jet angry or scared?

He owed his surgeon such an apology.

Oddly, by the end of the day, Pharma apologized to _him_. 

He’d been shooed out of the office in order for Pharma to take more confidential vidcalls. The snippy nurse had showed him to a recovery room. It was meant for long-term patients, and there was an observation camera in the ceiling. First Aid didn’t point it out, but Tarn noticed the lense soon enough. 

He hoped Pharma was watching him, but someone named Ratchet had been on the comm. frequency last. Whoever he was, seeing his name come up had spurred Pharma to dismiss the tank. From the way Pharma had looked at the screen, the caller had all his attention. He hadn’t even watched Tarn leave. He’d been temporarily forgotten in favor of this Ratchet person.

Being sent away like that wasn’t a good feeling. Tarn spent the next four hours failing to recharge, worrying that Pharma was still angry at him. 

So he was wide awake when the door slid open. Bringing his optics online, he turned his head and actually shuddered at the silhouette in the doorway. Slumped shoulders and downcast wings weren’t a good sign, but they were still recognizable. Strained systems whined inside his gut as pressure he hadn’t even been aware of dropped. Just seeing his surgeon relaxed him.

A hand lifted, and he was halfway across the room before he even knew he’d moved. “Pharma.” From relaxed to eager in four seconds. It might have been a record, but he didn’t remember. 

The sudden movement made Pharma flinch, but his hand stayed steady as he laid it on Tarn’s forearm. “You’re still awake.”

And straight from eager to excited in no time flat. He swore his armor tingled under the contact of those talented fingers. He inched his own hand toward the much smaller, slender blue hand. Maybe this time… “I’m finding it difficult to recharge tonight.”  


The hand on his arm casually moved away before he could cover it with his own. Slag. And he’d been so close this time!

Pharma stepped back enough to put a polite, professional distance between them. Tarn had no idea what to think of that beyond a sad sort of denial. He didn’t want professional, impersonal dealings. He wanted the possessive mech who grabbed him by the mask and order him around. 

“I apologize for handing you off to the nurse earlier without warning,” Pharma said quietly. “It has been brought to my attention that I haven’t been giving enough thought to your needs. Memory loss to any degree is a very upsetting experience for someone, and I’m sure it’s far more stressful for you.” A scan ran over the larger mech while Tarn stood there and blinked repeatedly at this turn of events. “Physically, you’ve recuperated well, but that’s no indication of your mental state. It’s unfair of me to expect a patient to handle what amounts to interrogation. I...should have intervened earlier, and I’m sorry that I allowed Prowl to harass you that way. His rank is no excuse for hounding a patient. If there’s anything that will help you in the future, please inform me or one of the staff, and we’ll do our best to assist your recovery.” 

“Don’t. Stop. I-I’m fine. You’ve been -- you’re the head of an entire facility, of course you delegated taking, um, care of me to a nurse. Not that I need care. I’m fine.” Tarn squirmed inside and floundered for words to stop this. This wonderful mech had saved him. The last thing he owed Tarn was an apology. Besides, Tarn didn’t want to be treated like a patient by him. “Everyone has been very considerate, and I’m grateful that you’ve taken the time to -- to personally keep watch on my welfare. Please, don’t apologize for doing your job.”

Pharma looked up at him, face blank. Tarn tried to look less flustered than he felt, and for once, he was glad he could hide behind a mask. It didn’t help that much. The medic probably saw right through him. 

“I am having trouble recharging,” he said in a small voice after a minute under that penetrating gaze. “Recharge protocols won’t engage. My processors are too active.”

The scrutiny went on. If anything, it grew more intense. Tarn wanted to retreat back inside the room and hide. He wanted to drop his optics. He wanted to scoop the shorter mech into his arms and never let go.

At last, Pharma seemed to see whatever he’d been looking for, and the surgeon sighed as he turned away. “Perhaps some company would help?” the surgeon asked lightly, and Tarn’s fuel pump rate picked up at the suggestion. The flyer didn’t wait for an answer before walking off down the hall. 

Not that there was any hope of Tarn turning down an offer like that! 

 

**[* * * * *]**

_[ **A/N:** Part of the fic for Dataglitch! Thank you!]_


	5. Part 5: "Who's louder?"

**Title:** Amnesia  
 **Warning:** Nonconsensual medical procedure (within the context of war), definite dubcon as a result   
**Rating:** R?  
 **Continuity:** MTMTE AU   
**Characters:** Pharma, Tarn, Ambulon, First Aid, Prowl, Ratchet  
 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors.  
 **Motivation (Prompt):** FelixFellow made a gorgeous picture of Pharma kissing Tarn. I had to reason out how this could happen. Things got a bit out of my control.

**[* * * * *] ******

Part Five: “Who’s louder?”

**[* * * * *] ******

The way he surprised Pharma sometimes lit a fire in his tanks no amount of glaring from First Aid could extinguish.

Not the bad kind of surprise. Not the sudden shrill surge of fear that jolted every system to battle ready. Ambulon got those. He froze like a jittery technimal ready to bolt every time Tarn moved too fast. First Aid’s hands slapped over his pistol holsters whenever the tank even looked at him funny.

Tarn didn’t mind scaring the two medical aides. Surprise and that suffocating second where they were scared for their lives amused Tarn a bit. At least, it did when the patients or Ambulon -- or that insufferable nurse, Tarn went out of his way to surprise _that_ one -- looked at him with fear-wide optics. He wasn’t amused when it was Pharma. He flinched when Pharma’s turbine ignitions clicked on. Fear was the surgeon’s default reaction, and Tarn hated it. Pride covered the fear as soon as it happened, but Tarn still backed away like he’d been burnt.

The other times, however. The other times, Pharma’s surprise made the surgeon somehow softer in a way no one else at Delphi ever saw, and Tarn glowed from the inside out with a warmth that felt like nothing else. 

At night, in the soft darkness when Pharma relaxed into recharge, Tarn surprised his surgeon. Often not intentionally, but he did.

He loved to touch Pharma. Despite his efforts, he didn’t have the most delicate touch. The surgeon woke the first few times he indulged already scrambling to escape while Tarn sat up, hands up to show they were empty, he wasn’t a threat, he didn’t mean any harm. Bleary optics glared at him, and the tank ducked his head to give Pharma a guilty look. 

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he apologized softly every time. Because Pharma wouldn’t outright admit to fear no matter how his wings vibrated, and Primus help Tarn if he apologized for scaring the mech. So he apologized for waking Pharma, and the surgeon’s stuttered ventilations calmed to angry huffs.

Most of the time, he simply kicked the tank out of his berth to wander the halls in sleepless shame. The night Pharma mumbled a resolution to finally assign him separate quarters, Tarn’s own spark seized in horrible, terrified surprise.

He didn’t leave the room that night. He sat at the desk until Pharma dropped off again, blue optics suspiciously squinting at him across the room until they dimmed. Then he knelt down beside the berth and learned how to touch his surgeon correctly.

“Mmm.” That was a featherlight touch. He dared a tad harder and got an appreciative purr from a sleep-idle engine. Okay, that was good amount of pressure. 

“Mmm?” Twitch twitch, and Pharma sighed. The leading edge of the little winglets were slightly ticklish. Good to know. 

“Nuuuh.” And the midriff on either side of the cockpit got the most adorable denial moaned at him as Pharma curled up to protect the sensitive area. That was so cute!

Tarn controlled his fans, dialing his sensor network up and locking down his shoulder joints until they couldn’t move without conscious commands. Too much pressure, unconsciously stroking that smooth, warm armor plating to fill his sensor cache with the _feel_ of Pharma was what had gotten him into trouble in first place. He wanted to scoop the jet into his arms and fold around him until their systems synced into one, but no. He had to resist. He had to gentle his hands into the softest of touches. His fingertips stroked, barely brushing over the surface of sleek plating. That was the key. 

“Mm. Nngh.” He drank in the small sounds and slid his thumbs ever-so-slowly along the bottom of Pharma’s helm crest. “Mmmmmnnrrr.”

The rumbling purr of that powerful flight engine filled him with a slow heat. It was a building sort of arousal, the kind that made him want to palm the surgeon’s thighs apart and rest between them, mask pressed to the jet’s vulnerable side. He wanted to get closer. He wanted to get inside Pharma’s defenses. He wanted to _be_ his defenses, part of and included and never separated from this slender spitfire of a medic. He wanted to listen to every single sound that came from him, and tease some more out that nobody else would ever hear. 

He _wanted_ Pharma so much it hurt, and the need lay in a dark, curling compulsion underneath the shallower lust. So he touched his surgeon gently, very gently, and ached all night for him.

Pharma awakened gradually, engine purring louder and systems spinning online from stand-by. Tarn nuzzled the hand he’d captured in one of his far larger hands. The other hand he kept where it was, tracing a transformation seam until the small, murmured sounds became a confused questioning noise as Pharma realized the pleasure wasn’t a dream. When the surgeon’s optics came online and stared at him, Tarn smiled under his mask.

Still staring, wary but not shocked, Pharma sat up slowly. Tarn leaned forward, arms sliding around that slender waist until the side of his mask pressed to the gold cockpit and he gazed up at the strange expression seeping in under sleepy arousal. Confusion dominated, followed by an exasperated sort of fondness.

“…Tarn.”

“Good morning,” he whispered, carefully keeping his vocalizer from dipping into that talent his surgeon hated.

“I…didn’t expect this.” A fine blue hand lifted, hovered, and eventually came to rest cupping the side of Tarn’s mask. Where it belonged, in his opinion, and he pushed into the light touch. He took it as a sign of affection, not daring to hope for anything more.

The tank kept his voice low. For some reason, they both spoke in hushed tones, as if anything louder would break the moment. “Expect what?”

“You to be so strongly -- “ Quick thought crossed Pharma’s optics for a moment, interrupting what he’d been saying, and Tarn wondered what his surgeon though during that short pause. “Touchy. You didn’t used to hold me like this.”

“I didn’t?” He couldn’t imagine not wanting to touch Pharma at every opportunity. “Does it bother you? I think, perhaps, losing my memories of you makes me want to hold you tighter to fill the gap.”

And that was the look of surprise his spark glowed to see. Helplessly taken aback, cynicism temporarily disarmed by Tarn’s complete honesty, Pharma stared down at him. His mouth moved soundlessly. Tarn couldn’t stop himself from reaching up to slide his massive hand along that beautiful face, thumb gliding over his surgeon’s bottom lip.

Blue optics blinked, and a little inquiring sound slipped out of Pharma’s mouth like he didn’t understand what he felt under that tiny gesture of sparkfelt devotion. Buried amidst the surprise, honesty slipped out. “No, it...doesn’t.”

Tarn thrilled to hear it.

**[* * * * *] ******


	6. Part 6: "Who wakes up first?"

**Title:** Amnesia  
 **Warning:** Nonconsensual medical procedure (within the context of war), definite dubcon as a result   
**Rating:** R?  
 **Continuity:** MTMTE AU   
**Characters:** Pharma, Tarn, Ambulon, First Aid, Prowl, Ratchet  
 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors.  
 **Motivation (Prompt):** FelixFellow made a gorgeous picture of Pharma kissing Tarn. I had to reason out how this could happen. Things got a bit out of my control.

**[* * * * *] ******

Part Six: “Who wakes up first?”

**[* * * * *] ******

Tarn didn’t remember, but Ambulon told him. “When Pharma’s annoyed, he gets absolutely everywhere. There isn’t a place in the clinic you can escape him poking his nose. He finds the smallest errors imaginable and uses it to tear our work apart,” the ward manager said after the smaller Autobot mustered the nerve to pull Tarn aside. “When he’s angry, you can hear his turbine halfway to the mines, and he blisters paint telling us what we did wrong. When he’s restless, he disappears and goes for a flight. When he’s **upset**...” Ambulon hesitated. “When he’s upset, he broods in his office.”

The much, much bigger mech looked down at him, halfway between confused at the information and amused that Ambulon had finally gotten the bearings to speak to him without witnesses present. The ward manager had tugged him into the lockroom just inside the front door of the clinic for privacy, in fact. He was standing as far from Tarn as possible, but he was alone with him. This was a first. “I see. And why are you telling me this?”

Fear flashed across Ambulon’s face, but he didn’t run. He had, a few times. Tarn had given up trying to calm him down. “I’m telling you because I passed a comm-call from CMO Ratchet to him earlier, and now he’s locked himself in his office. I’m afraid he’ll do something stupid.”

Pharma had locked himself in his office? Tarn had been out on patrol _sixteen hours_. How long had his surgeon been upset? Sudden worry seized his fuel pump, and Tarn pressed to the wall to casually slip by Ambulon without touching him and sending the skittish mech fleeing. 

Ambulon gulped air for courage and stepped directly in his way. That was enough of a shock to make the tank slow down, if not stop. “Don’t let Ratchet talk him into thinking he did the wrong thing,” the ward manager said firmly. His voice cracked only a little.

Tarn stopped dead. “Why would Ratchet tell him he did anything wrong?” Every time Pharma spoke of Ratchet, the tank tamped down surges of jealousy. He would never be his surgeon’s peer, nor a mentor. Pharma’s open admiration for his former tutor bled through no matter how the jet preened about his own skill. Everything he did had to be compared to what Ratchet could do. The one gaping hole in Pharma’s overbearing self-confidence was shaped like the Autobot Chief Medical Officer. For all that Pharma grumbled about how much better he was than the CMO, the surgeon looked up to Ratchet like no one else. Ratchet’s opinion meant the world to him, no matter how he dismissed it.

Tarn wanted to stuff Ratchet behind a filing cabinet somewhere and never hear Pharma talk about him again, but having Ratchet as a close peer -- maybe even friend -- made Pharma _happy_. As happy as the surgeon ever seemed, anyway. 

Ratchet -- well, Tarn had sort of been looking forward to making his acquaintance. Probably after rubbing cordite powder onto Pharma to make sure everyone knew whose he was, because Tarn had suspicions. Nobody’s opinion meant _that much_ to someone’s emotional balance unless there was something more than professional there, and he no intention of surrendering his surgeon to a former flame. He would slagging well scent-mark his territory like a Predacon if that would work.

So if Ratchet had chastised Pharma today, it was a big deal. Tarn was suddenly hesitant to approach Pharma’s office until he knew more about the situation. 

Ambulon looked away, arms crossing. His fingers picked at his lousy paintjob in nervous habit. As always, Tarn had the urge to tell him to go back to his original paint colors, he wasn’t fooling anyone. 

He’d said it once. Ambulon had started shaking so hard, Tarn had worried the mech was having a pump seizure. Pharma had rounded the corner a second later and herded the ward manager away after sternly telling Tarn it was rude to comment on the mech’s chipped paint. Since the surgeon normally had no compunction about making blunt remarks about other’s appearance, the abrupt turnabout made no sense. Tarn had been terribly confused, but then First Aid -- nasty little gossip-glitch that he was -- had helpfully informed him that nobody with any sense of compassion or tact commented on Ambulon’s paintjob. According to First Aid, Ambulon had first started trying to hide his former allegiance because of mechs like Tarn.

First he drove Ambulon to painting himself, and then he told the ward manager the paint looked horrible. Wow. Tarn really wasn’t endearing himself to this mech.

Yet here Ambulon was, trying to speak with him. “We...didn’t always get along. You know that, right?”

Yeah, he got that. Mostly from Ambulon’s frozen terror if he moved too quickly. “Yes.” He was getting rather tired of repeating the same thing over and over again to every new patient that arrived at Delphi, but if it’d get that sick look of fear off Ambulon’s face…one well-practiced spiel, coming up. ”I’m not that mech anymore, Ambulon. I don’t remember anything. Please don’t judge me by what you -- “

“No, no!” The ward manager waved a hand, realized he’d interrupted him, and swallowed hard as his optics popped wide. “I-I mean, this is an improvement. You’re not -- uh, you d-don’t harass me because I used to be a Decepticon, and I appreciate that.” A strained smile crossed his face like a mask. “I like you better like this.”

The tank wondered if he should feel insulted by that, but Ambulon moved on before he could decide.

“Ratchet doesn’t understand wh-what Pharma did. Is doing. He’s outside the danger zone of the D -- “ Ambulon choked on the words.

Nobody would talk about the Decepticons in front of him. Alright, so they’d talk about the Decepticons in general, although more nervous than normally, but that one particular group was never mentioned. Tarn wished the other Autobots wouldn’t try to spare his feelings this way. He didn’t remember what the Decepticons had done after capturing him, and his time with the Justice Division was a blank slate. He knew they were torturers and murderers, but he just didn’t remember. The other Autobots didn’t need to dance around him like a trauma victim. It was very kind of them to try to spare him pain, but it ended up being mostly irritating because of the memory wipe.

Tarn used his most bored voice. “The D.J.D.”

“Y-yes. Um. Them.” Ambulon’s yellow optics looked everywhere but at him, as if invoking the D.J.D. would throw Tarn into anger or panic. “Prowl sent Pharma here to deal with the threat. I -- I know that now.” 

He looked sick even saying it, and Tarn didn’t blame him. He wondered how he himself had felt, finding out too late that Ambulon was bait. He knew how felt about it _now_ , after Pharma told everybody, but the trap was ultimately responsible for his memory loss. It must have been a punch to the fuel pump realizing he’d been caught in Prowl’s trap.

The head of the clinic held a meeting only a day after Tarn’s arrival here at Delphi, and he’d laid out exactly what he’d done after finding out about the Justice Division’s interest in the clinic. He’d shown them the records of transfer requests, both for himself and Ambulon. The denials for each request had Prowl’s signature, and Pharma’s voice had been flat as he explained his solution to confronting the D.J.D. In light of Pharma’s desperate bargain -- parts from the dead in return for leaving the living alone -- Prowl’s refusal to aid the clinic was pitilessly cold.

Typical of the tactician’s manipulative, ruthless style, really. 

The pieces had certainly fallen into place for the clinic’s staff once they’d seen the full picture. First Aid had been horrified, and Ambulon’s frantic plea to be shipped out had been turned down flat during the meeting where Pharma laid out exactly what his purpose at Delphi was. The traitor assigned to the clinic had suckered the D.J.D. into Prowl’s trap, but Pharma was the one who’d concocted the actual plan to save his staff. As was the tactician’s goal sending him to Delphi in the first place, it seemed. Brilliant surgeon plus desperate situation; Pharma had come through.

Yes, Pharma had come out of that meeting too much of a saint for reality, but even the most cynical Autobot on Messatine couldn’t deny Tarn’s presence. The surgeon had managed to shock everyone by somehow getting Tarn back before everything fell into place. Now they had _time_ to work on a solution, because Tarn was back and could defend the clinic. Which was fortunate, because Pharma’s bargain with the Justice Division had apparently fallen through. It was up to Tarn to keep the Decepticons at bay. 

The attacks on the mines had picked up, and there had been three direct attacks on the Delphi Clinic already. The D.J.D. seemed enraged by Tarn’s survival, but the other Decepticons were as angry. He made sure to flaunt his mask when tearing through the ‘Cons. They absolutely hated that he used their precious emblem to protect his face from their attacks.

Meanwhile, Pharma’s solution was coming along. First Aid and Ambulon were working with the miners on transformation control. The virus was in its last stages of incubation. Tarn knew just enough about it to be terrified. If Pharma weren’t working with him every day to control his transformation addiction, the Red Rust virus would be the worst imaginable threat to him, too.

“Ratchet doesn’t understand,” Ambulon repeated softly, and this time the ward manager actually reached out to touch Tarn on the forearm. The tank was so surprised he gaped behind his mask. “Pharma is saving so many lives at the expense of those we’ve already written off as casualties of war. It’s not like the D.J.D. will ever give up. It’s either sacrifice a few, or all of us. The sanctity of life is a good thing to believe in, but this is war. Pharma’s given up his oaths for us already. Please, don’t let Ratchet convince him the sacrifice hasn’t been worth it.”

Tarn looked down at him. “I...understand.” 

He did understand. Ratchet didn’t. The CMO wasn’t here. He didn’t understand what kind of pressure being inside the Decepticon Justice Division’s territory put them under, much less the kind of sacrifices the medical staff here had to make to keep their patients safe. 

Morals. Safety. Each other.

Tarn’s hand patted the back of Ambulon’s hand once before pushing it away, and he turned to stride toward Pharma’s office. Pharma had sacrificed his memories to the Autobot Cause at the expense of medical oaths to do no harm, but he wouldn’t let his surgeon believe that the sacrifice had been in vain. After all, he was here at Delphi now. If a soldier’s death out on battlefield was an acceptable price to pay to defend this clinic today, then castigating Pharma for saving what he could from that death was nitpicking morality over the reality of war.

Ratchet just didn’t understand. Tarn knew his memories to be a price worth paying for the safety of this facility and the mech who worked in it.

**[* * * * *] ******


	7. Part 7: "Don't wake up"

**Title:** Amnesia  
 **Warning:** Nonconsensual medical procedure (within the context of war), definite dubcon as a result   
**Rating:** R?  
 **Continuity:** MTMTE AU   
**Characters:** Pharma, Tarn, Ambulon, First Aid, Prowl, Ratchet  
 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors.  
 **Motivation (Prompt):** FelixFellow made a gorgeous picture of Pharma kissing Tarn. I had to reason out how this could happen. Things got a bit out of my control.

**[* * * * *] ******

Part Seven: “Don’t wake up”

**[* * * * *] ******

Tarn slept heavily when he managed to drop into recharge. Sleep was a difficult thing, for him. He...worried. He recharged on a rotating schedule with the Autobots stationed at the mine, taking his turn on patrols despite being based in the clinic. It kept the clinic safer having him here in his downtime.

He still worried whenever he started to shut down. His mind flitted from thought to thought: concerns about what would happen while he slept, the cold metal of the bed next to him if Pharma wasn’t there, immense caution not to move in his sleep if the surgeon was. Sometimes he worried about what he didn’t know. Sometimes he worried about what he did. The worries made it hard to drop into recharge.

He slept deeply when he finally dropped off, but lousily despite that. His dreams yawned hollow. Because he slept so heavily, they felt inescapable. Recharge felt like wandering into a labyrinth with no exit. Whatever worries he didn’t think about while awake cropped up here. The shadows of cored-out databanks chilled him, and he ran from ghosts of whom he’d been.

Lost inside his empty memories, he hoped for rescue, and it came. He slept until Pharma’s hand slid down his arm and twined, finger by careful finger, with his own. The small, restless twitches at his transformation points stopped. The jittery, confused energy field smoothed out, and old feelings melted away into blissful happiness as red optics came online behind that purple mask.

Pharma talked with his hands, gesticulating with them as if they were a natural extension of his voice. Every emotion he felt broadcasted through them. When he was calm, they shaped lazy swirls and slid slowly along desktops or equipment. When he felt defensive, they fell to his sides, rigidly controlled. Suspicion tucked them away in his crossed arms to protect them from damage. Anger pointed them into weapons that stabbed under already sharp words. 

When Pharma touched Tarn, his hands spoke for him. He spoke to the tank the same way he did First Aid or Ambulon, perhaps even harsher, but it was the way he touched Tarn that made all the difference. A firm hand on his arm to guide him; a push to the chest to tell him to back off; the slow slide of a thumb under his optic; the back of two fingers brushing down the front of his throat. Even in the first few weeks where the suspicion kept Pharma’s hands out of reach behind armored forearms or present only in quick, brittle gestures, Tarn listened to how those hands spoke to him. 

More than that, he welcomed their touch. He learned their language. He courted them. He did everything he could to invite Pharma to cease filling silences with a wall of words and just _feel_ him. There were times Tarn pretended to sleep, just for that moment of waking. He felt like he belonged to the surgeon, stroked like a prize possession. 

He would kill for Pharma to touch him like that when he was awake. Just a casual touch, hands held together for even a moment. Something tender and softly pained squeezed in his spark at the idea of Pharma _allowing_ him to pick up one vulnerable, precious, ever-so-talented surgeon’s hand for no reason. Just on a whim, because he felt like showing his affection in the silent language of gestures. He was an expert in Pharma’s unspoken words. He wanted to say them back in the surgeon’s own gestures.

Words were no comfort to him. 

“I don’t love you,” the jet told him, standing across the office with his back to him. “You do know that?”

The shorter Autobot stood with his hands tucked tight under his arms, shoulders practically vibrating in defensive wariness, as if Pharma expected him to attack for saying the truth aloud. “I know,” Tarn said, watching the tiny sliver of blue he could see peeking out from around his surgeon’s turned back. Pharma’s fingers were clenched into fists, fists hidden behind folded arms. A double layer of protection the jet didn’t need around Tarn, of anyone. “I love **you** ,” he added, unable not to. He loved this mech so much the words were practically meaningless. They didn’t adequately convey everything he felt.

Pharma flinched a bit. “I didn’t mean for that. I didn’t intend for -- “ Doubt made the fists loosen, fingers wavering into an indecisive motion. “Love isn’t what you should feel toward me, I mean.” Those eloquent hands hesitated, saying in the way they stayed protected that Pharma didn’t trust the words Tarn helplessly kept repeating.

Tarn looked down at his own hands, the broad, strong hands of a soldier of war, and winced. Shame peeled strips off his self-confidence, because they were mechs from two entirely different worlds. The finicky details of medicine versus brute force; repairs versus destruction. He was supposed to be a subordinate, or at least a close protector. Falling in love seemed inevitable, but a betrayal as well. Why should Pharma trust him when he said he loved the jet? Reassign a guardian, and the guardian moved on. Love implied permanence, but assignments were temporary. At least, that’s probably what Pharma thought every time Tarn said the same useless words.

“What am I to you?” he asked a little sickly. He hoped -- well, he wasn’t sure what he hoped. Words were such an imprecise medium, and Pharma still wouldn’t unfold his arms. 

The surgeon did turn to glance toward him. “You’re...my duty. A responsibility of care, I suppose.”

Tarn stared.

Something that had been wound tense inside him for a while now relaxed in a sudden rush. The world snapped into place around him in an elastic release. Duty. Responsibility. Those were solid, meaningful words with measurable meanings. Not like love. 

Tarn knew he loved Pharma, knew it with all his being, but he couldn’t tell the surgeon what that meant. It meant he wouldn’t hurt the jet, except that he would. He would do whatever it took to save the jet, even betray or shoot or drive him away. It meant he protected him, except that Pharma protected _him_. The tank felt that in his very struts. Love meant Pharma was the most important person who had ever entered his world, and that was true but somehow nebulous. The intensity of emotion couldn’t be laid out. The boundaries changed day by day. Every statement he could make had stipulations depending on the circumstances. He had no way to _explain_ what he felt that that didn’t come out trite or obsessive. 

Pharma was his Cause, poetry in motion, words and movement to fill all the missing pieces deep inside him. Tarn had been adrift, cut loose, and the surgeon took the place of all that had been lost.

In return, Tarn was Pharma’s duty, and _that was good_. That was incredibly good. That was something he understood! He understood duty, how it had strict regulations and actual, written-out guidelines. They didn’t change. There were no shifts depending on situation or reactions. Those who abandoned duty were traitors and were punished as such. There were no sighing tragedies in duty. Tarn couldn’t count the number of stories about lovers who cheated, who turned to hate, who used one another. But duty? Duty was black-and-white.

Pharma, Tarn felt, had given him a far better deal that he offered in return.

Guilt joined the shame. It was just one more worry among the many that made it hard to recharge.

But when he did sleep, he dreamed. He dreamed of a grand, vast meaning to his life. He couldn’t remember what it was, only that the words had meant so much. Pharma spoke to him when he was awake, and the words were important, but still…deep inside him, he craved something more. Something solid to believe in, because he doubted his own words when he tried to assign them definite meaning.

In his sleep, he waited for the touch of hands. They said the words Pharma would never tell him out loud, and Tarn didn’t have to say anything in return.

**[* * * * *] ******


	8. Part 8: "Oh, you like that?"

**Title:** Amnesia  
 **Warning:** Nonconsensual medical procedure (within the context of war), definite dubcon as a result  
 **Rating:** R?  
 **Continuity:** MTMTE AU  
 **Characters:** Pharma, Tarn, Ambulon, First Aid, Prowl, Ratchet  
 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors.  
 **Motivation (Prompt):** FelixFellow made a gorgeous picture of Pharma kissing Tarn. I had to reason out how this could happen. Things got a bit out of my control.

**[* * * * *] ******

Part Eight: “Oh, you like that?”

**[* * * * *] ******

Tarn was doing that thing again. That thing where he was an evil former Decepticon who just happened to think he was an Autobot but was still acting like an evil glitch. First Aid couldn’t stand him. Everything Tarn had been couldn’t vanish overnight just because he couldn’t _remember_ his war crimes. Evil was evil; irredeemable, dirty hands never washing clean, black to the white, end of story.

Amnesia? That wasn’t how this stuff happened. He should have been shot in the head. Tarn should have been taken out in a blaze of gunfire and heroic poses by the Wreckers as he finally went down.

Oh, sure, there were exceptions to the ‘All Decepticon are evil’ rule, but First Aid tended to believe that mechs like Ambulon had never truly been Decepticons in the first place. They hadn’t fit in among the Decepticons, and eventually they came to realize that fact. Regular Decepticons didn’t have that inner goodness. They didn’t have consciences. 

Tarn wasn’t a genericon to be taken prisoner. He’d showed up at Delphi hiding his innate evil under amnesia, but First Aid wasn’t buying that act.

Especially when Tarn wouldn’t follow orders. “Spring here lasts **days** ,” First Aid said sternly. He wasn’t intimidated by the evil looming over him. He _wasn’t_. “We either clean now or have an even larger build-up next year when things thaw again. The stench is horrible. So take the mop and get to work!” _‘You fragger!’_ he wanted to add but didn’t. 

Tarn glared down at him. “For one thing, I’m off-duty -- “

“I am, too, and I just told you why we’re cleaning anyway!”

“ -- and for another, I don’t take orders from nurses.” The tank gave him a haughty look. Ooo, that superiority complex needed a swift kick up the barrel! “My commander is -- “ 

First Aid took vicious satisfaction from Tarn’s sudden uncertainty. The confusion in the red optics was a pleasure to behold. Yes, do tell. Who _was_ his commander? Oh, he couldn’t remember? That’s because Tarn wasn’t an Autobot. He wasn’t even a guest. He was a prisoner Pharma was getting some use out of! 

Or at least that’s how First Aid saw things, but the official story was the one being pushed by Autobot Command. As much as the nurse would like to take a stand and throw Tarn’s ignorance back in his face, well, he couldn’t.

So the verbal stumble quickly smoothed over, and First Aid fumed silently as Tarn gave him a gracious nod to cover it. “My commander is not you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, **Nurse** First Aid, I believe I’ll take advantage of the weather to take in some solar energy.” 

The _’and that’s that, you horrid little peon’_ could almost be heard. The only reason Tarn didn’t say it out loud anymore was because First Aid had reported him to Pharma for antagonizing the medical staff. The only time Tarn had given him the respect he deserved was while trying to stop him from filing that complaint. First Aid would have taken an apology and held the complaint over his head as a bit of extra insurance on the tank’s behavior, but Tarn had resorted to a near-threat. He’d delicately referred to the fact that he stood between the clinic and the Decepticons, and wouldn’t it be sad if something happened..? 

It’d been vague, but First Aid could read between the lines. Once an evil Decepticon, always an evil Decepticon.

It’d been immensely gratifying to add that threat to the report and watch Tarn’s optics go apprehensive. Pharma hadn’t dressed the tank down in front of First Aid, but Tarn had visibly flinched when the order to report to the surgeon’s office snapped over the clinic’s internal comm. system.

There had been no more disrespect or well-disguised threats after that. Tarn resorted to glaring a lot and snubbing the nurse whenever possible instead.

Which did, indirectly, lead to First Aid standing there in the main treatment room of the clinic holding two mops and loathing the Decepticon -- ex-Decepticon, whatever -- more than ever. “Get back here! Everyone’s supposed to pitching in, even mobile patients, so don’t think you’re special!”

“Mm, no.” Tarn strode for the door with all the lazy confidence of a slagger who knew he shouldn’t be slacking off to go bask in the sunlight but was going to do it anyway just because it’d spite someone he disliked. “I’ve been on patrol all night. I think I’m entitled to some rest and…and...”

And that’s when Tarn did that other thing. The thing he did that First Aid hated him for, because an evil Decepticon shouldn’t completely lose his train of thought and, in fact, slide off the tracks altogether just because he saw Pharma. 

Admittedly, Pharma was halfway straddling a table corner while pushing a vac-rag on a stick into the upper vent up where ceiling met wall. That vent grate caught every fleck of dust from outside before it came into the room, but the vent also sucked in enough moisture to form giant icicles hanging down inside the shaft. That didn’t cause a problem most of the time, but during these brief spring thaws, the vent turned to mud as water dripped down onto the accumulated dust. 

There wasn’t quite enough room for Pharma to hover, and the table couldn’t take the weight if he tried crawling over it. It was bolted to the wall, too, so the surgeon awkwardly balanced on the table corner as he swabbed at the slagging vent. His thighs gripped the corner precariously.

First Aid could actually see Tarn’s optics track Pharma’s aft. Behind the scary purple Decepticon mask, the tank’s mouth stayed open mid-word. Pharma grunted and muttered something irritably, the words intelligible from across the room. He shifted about, scooting further up onto the table corner. Tarn’s attempt at talking dribbled off into unabashed staring.

First Aid plopped the mop heads on the floor and huffed. Okay, fine, it could have been cute if it were anyone but Tarn, and that aft grinding on the table might have been sexy if it belonged to anyone but First Aid’s boss. Being that it was Tarn and Pharma, however, First Aid was mostly just exasperated. A little amused, maybe. 

Because, well, it was the other thing, and even though he never forgot about that one thing Tarn did, the fact that Tarn kept doing this _other_ thing made the nurse doubt. His mental image of how events should have happened kept running up against what had really happened, and it made him wonder about what he’d thought he’d known about the war, about the Decepticons, and even about the Autobots. 

Prowl had made Delphi a trap. He’d assigned Ambulon here as bait. Pharma had been assigned to make due the best he could. First Aid had to wonder what would have happened if Pharma _hadn’t_ managed to wipe Tarn’s memories. If Tarn had needed to be taken out the way First Aid thought Decepticons should be…that was out of the scope of any Autobot on Messatine. How would Pharma have dealt with the D.J.D. on his lonesome? However brilliant the surgeon, he wouldn’t come out on top if sent against an evil killer war machine.

Simply put, Tarn confused First Aid by existing. He did _things_ , and First Aid couldn’t explain them away.

The nurse looked at Tarn, then at the mops. “You should help Pharma clean,” he suggested after thinking hard for minute.  


“Help Pharma clean,” the tank repeated. His hands twitched slightly, and First Aid mentally gagged on just how obvious it was that Tarn wasn’t thinking about walking over there and _cleaning_. There would be a very large tank cozy folded around his boss in no time flat if the nurse didn’t intervene. First Aid put the odds at 50/50 as to whether Pharma would smirk over his shoulder at the purring, cuddly tank -- or give the ex-‘Con frostbite with how quick he turned cold. 

Either way, work wouldn’t get done. He turned his visor toward the ceiling, asking Primus for patience (and courage) before prodding Tarn with the handle of the mop. “Yes. Clean. Apply mop to melted water. Okay?” 

First Aid poked and prodded him toward the door, and Tarn craned his neck around trying to watch the surgeon for as long as physically possible. “Okay…” 

The mech clearly had no idea what he was agreeing to. Every speck of his attention was glued to Pharma. He really was pathetically malleable when Pharma entered the equation, and First Aid probably shouldn’t be taking advantage of his distraction this way.

The nurse decided that a twinge of shame was enough.

**[* * * * *] ******


	9. Part 9: "Hint"

**Title:** Amnesia  
**Warning:** Nonconsensual medical procedure (within the context of war), definite dubcon as a result  
**Rating:** R?  
**Continuity:** MTMTE AU  
**Characters:** Pharma, Tarn, Ambulon, First Aid, Prowl, Ratchet  
**Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors.  
**Motivation (Prompt):** FelixFellow made a gorgeous picture of Pharma kissing Tarn. I had to reason out how this could happen. Things got a bit out of my control.

**[* * * * *] ******

Part Nine: “Hint”

**[* * * * *] ******

The bed was cold.

To be fair, all of Delphi was cold. Messatine was a frozen world. The clinic conserved energy by only heating the rooms that really needed it. The rest of the facility stayed just above coolant crystallization level, and antifreeze checks were mandatory at the exits to the outdoors. 

Still, the slab of metal serving as a bed in Pharma’s quarters always seemed particularly chilled when the surgeon wasn’t there. Tarn vented into the empty space where sleek wings and pretty canopy glass should have been, and he brooded.

The virus had been released upon the Decepticons five days ago. The Justice Division’s nonstop attacks had abruptly ceased three days after that, and Tarn and his fellow Autobots hadn’t seen more than corpses lying in rust-stained snow since. None of them had closed in to confirm cause of death. For one thing, the ‘Cons could be faking. For another, they spotted the bodies via binoculars. Walking closer would have taken way too long. Patrols were already taking forever. 

Walking around instead of transforming to drive the routes was tweaking everyone’s patience. It was amazing how the Autobots took transformation for granted when they could do it whenever they wanted. Now that they couldn’t, the need to transform had everybody climbing the walls. Restraining the urge to drop into altmode on a whim had taken months of _training_. 

Which was exactly what Pharma had counted on when he developed the Red Rust virus. The Autobots in the mines were frustrated by the restrictions but perfectly safe from the virus as a result. The Decepticons hadn’t had the benefit of a team of medics working with them for months, training the habit of transforming on a whim out of them. They might hold out for a few days. Ten, by Prowl’s most generous estimate. But ultimately, the ability to transform was a Cybertronian’s greatest strength -- and weakness.

Transformation meant infection. They might figure that fact out eventually, but infection meant death. Pharma had designed the virus to kill as quickly as possible. There would be no time to find a cure before death.

Hence the reason the Delphi medical team had descended on the miners with alarming vigor. The Autobots hadn’t quite known what they were agreeing to going into the training, but smart Autobots didn’t argue with a medic who looked ready to kill a mech to save his life. The miners were grumpy from having to walk everywhere, but they were as safe as the Delphi Clinic could make them. By force, if necessary.

“Now you all know how I feel,” Ambulon had muttered the day the altmode ban went into effect.

Everyone had given him a sour glare. Yes, of course _he_ wasn’t suffering. He was a _leg_. His transformation was _useless_.

For some reason, First Aid had laughed bitterly for fifteen minutes afterward. Nobody had the gears to ask why. He hadn’t exactly seemed sane. Pharma had given him a thoughtful look and ended up dragging him into a treatment room by one wheel.

Leaving Tarn to walk patrols, pull double shifts standing guard outside the clinic in case any Decepticons got the bright idea to kidnap a medic, and itch. He itched so much. His transformation points crawled, plating twitching every once and a while as a sensation like a thousand tiny needles scratched over the sensors. It built up around his T-cog in a maddening pressure that slowly crushed his brain module into mindless need. His body shook at random as the urge to transform screeched through him in long waves. 

Pharma had worked tirelessly with him to break his transformation addiction, but somehow, being aware that he _couldn’t_ transform made the need worse. Gaaah. A month of this! Ten days to kill the Decepticons, ten days to check for survivors and smelt the bodies, and ten days to sterilize anything the virus had touched. 

Tarn turned his head and banged his mask against the bed. A month of no transforming. He could do this. He would.

He’d hoped Pharma would also be recharging this shift to at least distract him, but apparently not. So it was just him, the cold bed, and lots of itching.

He’d go mad before the end of the night.

The door bleeped and slid open. 

Tarn looked up hopefully. “Pharma?”

“Mm, no, I’m Ambulon. I decided to move in. I hope you don’t mind a new roommate.” Pharma strolled across the room to set a repair kit on the desk.

It took a moment for the dry humor to register. His surgeon had been snappish for days, and Tarn didn’t immediately get the joke. When he did, he reset his optics and grinned. “Ah. Well, how could I possibly mind the presence of a work of art? You’re looking particularly lovely this evening, Ambulon. Did you touch up your paint?”

That got a sardonic look. “Oh, you noticed?”

“You do look a bit different.” He sat up to meet the flyer as Pharma moved toward the bed. “In fact, you’ve never been so beautiful.” One massive hand ventured toward a trim hip, pausing for a second in case the touch was unwelcome. It only earned a smirk, however, so he cupped that hip, fingers dipping down to stroke the back of the thigh as well. “Stunning, even. Did you use a magnetic paint? I don’t think I can take my hands off you. Look.” He pretended to tug and only maneuvered Pharma between his knees. “I’m stuck.”

“That’s a shame,” the surgeon murmured. He braced his knees against the inside of Tarn’s thighs and leaned forward to press his chest to the much larger mech. His helm crest came to rest against Tarn’s mask, and blue optics looked into red. “Fortunately, my interpersonal skills are ideal for handling patients in distress. Are you in distress, Tarn?”

A shudder crinkled his treads for a second, and it wasn’t from the crawling need in his T-cog. Ten of the finest fingers in the known galaxy were rubbing right over an itchy transformation point, soothing the itch and starting a far more pleasurable burn in its place.

“Terribly.” His vocalizer squeaked as he sucked in air against his ventilation fans. When had it gotten so hot in here? “Help. Help. I’m so distressed.”

The fingers traced along a seam and settled into a joint to start a real massage. The itch went up in flames, forgotten. Good riddance to it. Tarn groaned and melted back onto the bed when Pharma gave him a little push. The groan turned into a tiny whimper when the smaller mech promptly climbed up to straddle him. 

“Is that right?” the surgeon asked, mock-concerned. “I’ll just have to do something about that, then.”

And he did.

**[* * * * *] ******

_[ **A/N:** The other half of Dataglitch’s fic! Thank you!]_


	10. Pt. 10

**Title:** Amnesia  
 **Warning:** Nonconsensual medical procedure (within the context of war), definite dubcon as a result   
**Rating:** R?  
 **Continuity:** MTMTE AU   
**Characters:** Pharma, Tarn, Ambulon, First Aid, Prowl, Ratchet  
 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors.  
 **Motivation (Prompt):** FelixFellow made a gorgeous picture of Pharma kissing Tarn. I had to reason out how this could happen. Things got a bit out of my control.

**[* * * * *]**

Part Ten: “Kiss kiss fall in love”

**[* * * * *]**

He didn’t remember.

He didn’t remember why his mask looked like a Decepticon symbol when everyone around him wore the Autobot one. There were reasons that Pharma gave him, and a long story about what had happened while he’d been a Decepticon prisoner, but none of it sounded familiar. It all made sense, but it didn’t trigger any memories in his empty archives.

He didn’t know why the patients and soldiers feared him, but his sheer size and strength filled in some of those blanks soon enough. That, at least, wasn’t a mystery long. He got used to explaining that he wasn’t who he’d been under Decepticon control. He got used to moving slowly whenever someone looked tense, and calling for someone to intervene if wariness escalated into anger or terror. Letting Pharma fight his battles for him made him feel useless, but watching the surgeon protect him from backlash from stubbornly ignorant mechs turned his spark to quivering jelly. 

Wasting Pharma’s time on calming fearful Autobots let Tarn admire him. At least it wasn’t a total loss. Besides, it was hard to defend himself from vague accusations of things he didn’t know anything about, and Pharma had authority to spare. Even hysterical mechs subsided when the surgeon stared them down. They got worse when Tarn tried the same trick.

He didn’t remember why.

He didn’t know why the Autobot scientists swarmed him after every battle. They asked him questions about his reformatting that he didn’t have the memories to answer, although he would if he could. They grumbled that he was being uncooperative, but the Autobot Second came to speak with him once, calculating optics locked on his face. Tarn tried to explain that he just didn’t _know_ any more. The knowledge was gone, if he’d ever had it, and an uneasy swish of static filled his mind when his mind searched for the missing memory banks.

Prowl told the scientists to stop harassing him. He also touched Tarn’s forearm, less a reassurance than a careful measure of personal contact that nonetheless made the massive tank like him just a little. “He’ll be here soon,” the small Autobot told him, and Tarn’s fuel pump skipped a beat.

Tarn sang that night in his guarded quarters, songs he didn’t know the lyrics for but still expressed his happiness. _He_ would be here soon. 

Tarn had spent a hazy length of time on Planet Messatine, defending the clinic and the mines from attacks by Decepticons who claimed to know him, who claimed he was a traitor. Bewildered, head strangely empty and pained, he’d returned to the Delphi Medical Clinic less than sure he belonged there. Ambulon’s jittery fear around him didn’t help. First Aid’s quiet suspicion and sidelong threats were easier to deal with, if not understand. But _he_ had welcomed Tarn back every time. Sometimes only a brusque transmission acknowledging his return, but occassionally Pharma had waited at the main entrance. All the doubts evaporated away those familiar, achingly lovely red and blue colors became visible through the glare off the ice. His surgeon didn’t look up watching for his return, but even working on a datapad, he exuded responsibility. 

Even when he hadn’t been there waiting, Tarn knew the flyer had been at the ready to check his health. No other medic at Delphi was allowed to repair his wounds. Pharma was his protector and solid comfort, just as when the tank had first woken up under his care. 

Tarn had left Messatine under heavy guard and in chains he didn’t remember how he’d earned, but _he_ had taken him aside before the Autobot ship launched to return to Cybertron. Those insanely talented fingers had slid over the planes of Tarn’s mask, blue over purple, and Tarn had gratefully leaned into the caress.

“Why?” he’d asked, and he hadn’t even been sure what he’d been asking about. About the betrayed hatred in the D.J.D.’s optics when he’d faced them across the battlefield, or the terror on Ambulon’s when they encountered each other walking the halls late at night, unable to recharge for the dreams of emptiness that now haunted them.

A small smile had answered him, a tad mad but mostly satisfied. “Because I was abandoned here to create a solution out of nothing but desperation. I found the solution they didn’t expect, and now they don’t know how to deal with the results.” Pharma had reached up, hands bringing Tarn’s mask down to meet him, and Tarn’s hands had slid around to cup the smaller, frailer, far more beautiful mech’s helm in turn as the gentle pressure of a tongue slipped hot and weirdly, tenderly possessive over where his mouth lay. Under the mask, Tarn’s lips had parted as if he could feel the kiss. 

Blue optics had closed. Tarn’s own, red and afraid to miss even a moment, had watched greedily until _he_ stepped away, leaving Tarn straining after him. “Don’t worry. They’ll have to transfer me back to the main hospitals after this. I’ll see you again, my Tarn.”

The claim made his spark flutter even now, and he sang for joy that his love would come for him. 

In the morning, the guards -- respectful as ever but wary as anything -- asked him if he knew other songs he could sing. Any other songs. Anything but the wordless anthems he’d crooned.

Since he didn’t entirely know what he’d been singing in the first place, he said no. They found him someone to teach him more appropriate music.

“Be good,” Pharma had ordered before the Autobot ship took him away from Delphi.

Tarn didn’t remember being bad.

**[* * * * *]**


	11. Pt. 11

**Title:** Amnesia  
 **Warning:** Nonconsensual medical procedure (within the context of war), definite dubcon as a result   
**Rating:** R?  
 **Continuity:** MTMTE AU   
**Characters:** Pharma, Tarn, Ambulon, First Aid, Prowl, Ratchet  
 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors.  
 **Motivation (Prompt):** FelixFellow made a gorgeous picture of Pharma kissing Tarn. I had to reason out how this could happen. Things got a bit out of my control.

**[* * * * *]**

Part Eleven: “What do you love most?”

**[* * * * *]**

He didn’t like talking about it. Rung made a note and politely didn’t stare at the massive ex-Decepticon sitting uncomfortably on his couch. That wasn’t correct, however. Tarn had never been a Decepticon, at least in his mind. Referring to him as an ex-‘Con promoted an outside stigma Tarn himself didn’t feel. So far as Tarn knew and felt, he was an Autobot and had always been one. He just didn’t remember how or why.

Rung hadn’t understood that, at first. He knew only what was in Tarn’s file, and that had been heavily edited before being passed to him. 

Normally he wouldn’t accept that when taking a new patient, but Prowl had pressured him. He’d only agreed to taking Tarn as a patient after several of his other patients’ appointments disappeared off his schedule, mysteriously reassigned to duty instead of the sessions vital to their mental health and recovery. The psychotherapist fought that ridiculous abuse of power via official channels, but the point had been made. Prowl really wanted him to meet with Tarn. 

Well, Rung took sessions with the Wreckers. The former leader of the Decepticon Justice Division couldn’t be that much different.

He knew better, now. He should know better than to hold expectations of new patients, at his age. Rung had gone into the session feeling somewhat uneasy, expecting to meet a mech suffering the usual side-effects of losing a fundamental core belief, either by intent or outside circumstances. 

Tarn glowered at him for approximately two minutes before confessing that he’d come to the appointment of his own will instead of Prowl’s orders. Pharma had agreed with the idea of seeing the psychotherapist. Rung had taken notes furiously at that, because even just speaking about Pharma changed the huge tank from a potential Decepticon threat to a lovesick Autobot. Just a mech like any other, pining after someone he loved with all his spark. One of the most powerful mechs in either faction, someone whose involuntary defection had probably changed the course of the war, and he turned to putty in the hands of a medic. An immensely talented surgeon, true, but a medic nonetheless.

Because Pharma respected Rung, Tarn respected Rung. That made things considerably easier. Opening up about how he felt and his perspective on events surrounding him didn’t take much more than some gentle guidance. Tarn _wanted_ to trust him. Pharma believed psychotherapy would help him, and therefore Tarn’s natural distrust of someone he didn’t know fell beneath the approval of his beloved surgeon. Some delicate probing into what the tank’s own opinions were uprooted a disturbing lack of self underneath the adoration of Pharma, but the absence of development could have been a side-effect of memory loss. 

Tarn had a core of steel to him, however, that was all his own. He had an obsessive personality, prone to addictions and fanatic faith in singular beliefs. From what Rung knew about Tarn, leader of the D.J.D., the Decepticon Cause had been the center of his life. Megatron had been his idol. Tarn, Autobot and amnesiac, believed in Pharma. Only and just Pharma. Even his transformation addiction had been rerouted, until abstaining from indulging became an act of devotion.

The glowering, as it turned out, had been because Tarn resented the implication from some of his handlers -- and Ratchet -- that his adulation of Pharma meant he was brain-damaged. Oh, did he take offense at that.

Part of Rung’s orders explicitly stated that he never imply it went the other way: the mental damage had resulted in this complete love-struck worship of Pharma.

Instead, Rung brought up Tarn’s acceptance into the Autobot ranks, and the tank was positively happy to talk about that. With Pharma’s encouragement, of course, but getting problems out into the open one way or another was definitely helping the former Decepticon’s mental stability. He and Rung went through session after session where Tarn could finally speak with someone who _listened_. Pharma apparently talked with him, but communication with the Delphi Clinic was infrequent. Suspiciously so, as Rung noted but didn’t mention to Tarn. 

“Do you tell Pharma about these problems?” They were problems. Tarn poured out a list of frustrations over being guarded, being spied on, and being treated like a traitor or threat wherever he went. “I’m sure he could speak with someone, if you feel that no one is paying you any mind.” No one seemed to, perhaps because Tarn stayed aloof from the other Autobots. But how much of that was because they treated him like a pariah?

Tarn shifted uneasily on the couch. “They’re not important.”

“Is that your opinion, or has Pharma told you that?” The surgeon, from what little Rung recalled, was a bit of a walking ego. Underneath the pride lurked a genuine care for his patients, but it was difficult to see through haughty arrogance. Then again, those with true talent but low self-confidence often put on a cold front. A medic who watched over a patient this dependent on him wouldn’t push aside issues like this.

Big hands turned upward, and Tarn started to say something before cutting himself off. He wouldn’t meet Rung’s optics. “I…don’t want to spoil what little time I do get to talk with him.”

The slender orange mech frowned slightly and made some notes. Either that means Pharma didn’t want to hear about Tarn’s problems, or Tarn was intentionally keeping his surgeon in the dark. Neither option supported a healthy relationship between these two.

“Don’t tell him,” the tank commanded, suddenly aggressive, and Rung flinched back in shock. “It’s not -- he doesn’t know I talk about him with you. I think he’d be -- he wouldn’t like it.” The aggression disappeared as suddenly as it came, and Tarn fidgeted nervously. “He already calls so rarely.”

Blinking, Rung wrote down a quick notation on what he’d just written. For all his size, Tarn had insecurities larger than he was. “Of course I won’t tell him. What you and I talk about here is strictly confidential.  
With your permission, I would like to see if something can be done about your schedule.” Namely, that orders confined Tarn to quarters unless accompanied by a guard detail. That was excessive, even offensive.

It took some assurance that word wouldn’t get back to Pharma, but Tarn eventually agreed. Rung, in turn, spoke with Prowl about his concerns. Tarn wasn’t a potential weapon about to blow up in the Autobots’ faces; this was a new Autobot trying his best to do what he was told and not understanding why he was reviled for doing it. The psychotherapist didn’t directly bring up Tarn’s haunted nightmares or the fact that he had difficulty recharging at all. Rung had urged him to speak with his attending medic on base, however. The more stressed Tarn became, the worse the side-effects of his amnesia became.

Besides recharge difficulties and bad dreams, Tarn was beginning to suffer waking malfunctions. The muddled fragments of memory remaining in Tarn’s databanks gave him splitting processor errors more and more frequently, and everything he thought about or saw during those errors came to him as if through a thick fog.

“I recommend you transfer Pharma to his location permanently,” Rung said quietly when Prowl consulted him on Tarn’s growing instability. “And no, I’m not saying I agree with what Pharma did to him. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s already been done. What’s left behind is no longer Tarn of the D.J.D. This is a mech who is heavily dependent on Pharma for his mental health, and Pharma has not done anything to wean him from that dependency.” Neither had Prowl, for that matter, but Rung settled for a reproving look. “Without extensive reprogramming to modify Pharma’s original work, however, that dependency will remain hardwired into him. Separating them like this does nothing but destabilize him more day by day. His mind will collapse without Pharma’s support, and I can’t say how the snap will affect him.” Violently, perhaps, but Rung’s opinion was that the tank might simply degenerate into a staring drone unable to process anything beyond a yawning need at the core of his being.

“Ratchet believes Tarn is addicted to Pharma,” Prowl stated, but it was a question. 

That would explain why the Autobots had limited Tarn to sips of contact: vidscreen calls and audio messages only minutes long. They’d been trying to control an addict by controlling when and how he got his fix. Rung had been called in because they hadn’t gotten the expected results. 

“You’re afraid he’s showing signs of quitting the addiction,” Rung said quietly, fixing Prowl with a hard gaze. “You’re not concerned about the effects of addiction on him. You want to encourage the addict to keep needing the addiction.”

Prowl didn’t bother to deny the accusation. “Is Ratchet correct?”

Rung stayed silent for a moment, but the damage had already been down. Repairing Tarn was beyond the scope of his abilities. The best Rung could do at this point was help what Tarn was now. “No. The symptoms are similar, but this is something beyond a program habit or physical craving. His base programming has recentered completely around Pharma.” His expression settled into grim professionalism. “You don’t have to worry about him shaking the habit. The signs of ‘quitting’ you’ve seen are, in fact, intense physical withdrawal and mental confusion. His mind is shutting down without Pharma here, Prowl. He’ll collapse.”

Prowl seemed pleased. Rung wondered if anyone had bothered to inform Pharma of the trap the surgeon had laid for himself. Tarn needed the surgeon, and the Autobots wanted to keep their shiny new weapon functional, so Prowl would procure the medic for him. Pharma might only realize he was a pawn in Prowl’s wider game after he’d been transferred.

Then again, Pharma was probably well-aware of Prowl’s manipulations by now. They were how Tarn had come to Delphi Clinic in the first place, after all.

Rung had done what he could to help his patient outside their appointments. That still left him doing everything possible inside them, and that included finding how much Tarn really thought about his sad, delusional need for Pharma. A leading question here, a specific observation there, and Rung listened to the results attentively.

The answer surprised him a bit. Tarn put a _lot_ of thought into his obsessive love. 

“His mind,” Tarn said now, and Rung leaned forward to give him his full attention. “I…he’s brilliant. He’s ruthless and brilliant. He took down the entire D.J.D. with a virus alone.” He seemed so proud of that. Rung’s spark twisted in his chest as the former leader of the Justice Division looked at him as if eager to inform him of Pharma’s accomplishments. “All I did was hold them off from the mines for a few months. Pharma’s the one who destroyed them.” The tank looked down, and Rung could see a tender smile behind that fearsome mask. “The Red Rust was brutal, but he set it loose without hesitating.” Earning him a permanent malpractice mark on his record, the entire Autobot Medical Division’s disgust and fear, and Ratchet’s censure. 

Rung wondered how much of that Tarn knew, because the tank folded his hands together in his lap and sighed. “He did what he had to in order to protect us, but…”

Tarn looked up, giving the slender orange Autobot an earnest look. “I don’t think anyone else ever saw what he went through making that virus. Ambulon said it was nothing less than the Decepticons deserved, and First Aid said Pharma was a hero for doing it, but it wasn’t easy on him. He didn’t let anyone else see it, but I think it drove him a little mad. He’s a surgeon. He’s the best surgeon on Cybertron, and he had to kill a whole base full of Decepticons. Mechs, just like you or I. He didn’t -- say anything. He’s very proud of his skill, justifiably so, but there were times that even when he talked about how the virus wouldn’t hurt the rest of us, his wings shook.”

Rung stared at him. That was not something included in any of the reports about the Messatine Massacre. It wasn’t, but it made a terrible kind of sense. Pharma was a proud mech but an exceptional medic. Breaking his medical oaths in the most brutal way possible must have been hard on the surgeon.

He made a mental note to make counseling mandatory for Pharma when Prowl inevitably transferred him here. The surgeon’s pride meant he would never seek the help he obviously needed.

How sad that a former enemy had to point out how much pain Pharma’s own faction had put him through. 

Rung needed to talk to Ratchet very soon about this.

Tarn looked down again, hands unfolding and refolding again. “He let me see that madness. He came to me as if I could protect him, and he -- he relied on me.” That notorious voice wavered just a bit under intense emotion. “No matter what anyone else thinks about what I feel for him, I truly believe he feels something for me in return.” Defiant, he stood suddenly as if to glare down the world. “Say what they want, nobody can tell me that’s brain damage talking.”

Strangely, Rung had to agree.

**[* * * * *]**


	12. Pt. 12

**Title:** Amnesia  
 **Warning:** Nonconsensual medical procedure (within the context of war), definite dubcon as a result   
**Rating:** R?  
 **Continuity:** MTMTE AU   
**Characters:** Pharma, Tarn, Ambulon, First Aid, Prowl, Ratchet  
 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors.  
 **Motivation (Prompt):** FelixFellow made a gorgeous picture of Pharma kissing Tarn. I had to reason out how this could happen. Things got a bit out of my control.

**[* * * * *]**

Part Twelve: “who performs/receives spark-play more often”

**[* * * * *]**

It’d been months. Months of short, infrequent calls that took the edge off and nothing more. Pharma finally transferred, however, and Tarn got a blissful, immeasurable time period with his lovely surgeon. But then it’d been weeks, because their separate duties pulled them in opposite directions, working and fighting in completely different sectors. It’d been a few minutes here or there between the odd duty shift that coincided, because even when they had time off, Pharma had been in high demand at the main hospital. And then Tarn had been assigned to another base as the front lines shifted away, and they’d both been too busy to see one another.

That was relationships were like in war, or so Prowl told Tarn. Tarn clenched his hands into fists and made his voice stay reasonable while agreeing. Agreement turned to hints a couple months in, and persuasion after the base change. It didn’t do him any good. The tactician had a dozen reasons at the ready for why Pharma had to stay away. 

The Autobots no longer chained Tarn for transport, not after the sessions with Rung started, but Tarn was rarely alone. An Autobot or two always ‘kept him company,’ a.k.a. kept guard over him. Those guards watched his hands and his treads after ever vidcall wherein Prowl that denied him his surgeon ‘a little longer.’

When the twitching started, Tarn got a personal call. 

He hadn’t even wanted to open the Call Waiting icon on his tiny room console, but he’d already locked himself in his room after a snarled comment at the base’s commanding officer got him reprimanded. It was either lock himself in or scare half the base pacing the halls trying to calm the itch of denied need. There was a call waiting, and what else was he going to do tonight? Recharge? Not when he was this riled up.

Huffing air through his vents, he threw himself on his recharge slab and smacked the acceptance key. Might as well. Maybe his CO had contacted Rung to calm him down. Maybe he’d filed an official reprimand, and now Prowl was on the line to dress him down. Maybe it was another scheduling request for a check-up with Ratchet. Urgh. He was _not_ in the mood for this slag. 

The call window opened, and Tarn gave an undignified bleat of shock as he fell right off the slab.

“Graceful,” Pharma said dryly.

Tarn scrambled back into sight still trying to pull composure out of thin air. It didn’t work very well. The cannons on his back shook with suppressed emotion, and the gaze he turned on his surgeon was frankly starved. His optics zoomed in and traced over Pharma’s face even as he locked his hands together in his lap to keep from reaching toward the screen. His fingers were too bulky. They’d block out half the screen, and he couldn’t -- he just couldn’t do that. “Pharma.” His voice wanted to show everything he felt, but he forcefully kept his vocalizer monotone. 

“Tarn.” An elegant nod of greeting from the jet. Neutral optics studied him through the screen, and Pharma’s face stayed carefully impassive. “Your commander tells me you’ve been losing control of your temper.”

On the one hand, part of him cringed that his poor behavior prompted this call. On the other hand, who cared _how_ he’d gotten it? Need roared in the mechanisms of his upper chest, pushing against his shoulder joints as if urging him to somehow pull the surgeon through the screen. _Want_ turned the dark, underlying compulsion into a slicker, hotter, drenching desire that coated him from the inside out. 

He swallowed several times in quick succession until he had it under control. “I…miss you.”

That was not an answer to Pharma’s implied question. The surgeon’s lips turned downward for a moment before he sighed and sat back in his chair. Tarn could vaguely make out the details of an office behind him. Aw, frag. Had Pharma’s _duty shift_ been interrupted to make this call?

“I know you do,” the surgeon said softly even as Tarn’s guilt skyrocketed. The tank blinked, momentarily befuddled by the gentle tone when he’d been braced for castigation. Pharma hesitated but eventually lifted a hand to the screen. Blue fingers set against the glass. “What do you miss the most?”

Oh, Primus. What _didn’t_ he miss? “You. All of you. Just you,” Tarn blurted, and his fuel pump hammered as his mind caught up. Well, that was obvious and humiliatingly needy in one. But entirely true, not to mention worth spilling out like since Pharma’s professional mask split into a startled, pleased smile for half an instant in response. That made the brief flash of embarrassment worth it.

“You,” Tarn repeated. One hand hovered, wanting to touch the image of his surgeon’s fingertips but not daring. The lock-down on his vocalizer failed, and a low, throbbing reverb underlined how he longed to reach out to the beautiful flyer on the other side of the screen. “I miss the sound of your footsteps down the hall before you turn the corner ahead of me, and the smell of you just after you land.” That smell. The burnt fuel from a still-hot turbine and the fresh, chilly sting of cold air drifting off his plating. Tarn ached, remembering. “I miss hearing about your shift.” He missed feeling proud of everything Pharma did on-shift. He missed the feel of sleek plating under his palms off-shift. He missed watching others forget to eye him warily because Pharma always took center-stage, diverting attention as skillfully as he did everything else. 

Tarn hurt inside, missing Pharma.

And blue optics drank in his pain. “That’s not all you miss,” Pharma said, and his voice dipped into a quiet whisper Tarn recognized. 

The tank’s optics went wide as his beloved surgeon glanced about, obviously checking that the door was locked and his schedule cleared. Big treads worked back and forth on suddenly trembling shoulders. Fine mechanisms throughout Tarn’s body went into bitty spasms of need/want/ _yes yes yes please_ when Pharma turned back to the screen.

“Pharma..?” His voice pitched high and hopeful.

Pharma leaned toward the screen and smiled, and if Tarn had been starved then this smile fed him. “Open your chest, Tarn. I want to see your spark chamber. There seems to be a very delicate procedure to be done, and the patient is apparently **quite** tempermental.”

Over the sound of instant obedience, the surgeon purred, “I have missed having someone who can follow directions.”

**[* * * * *]**


	13. Pt. 13

**Title:** Amnesia  
 **Warning:** Nonconsensual medical procedure (within the context of war), definite dubcon as a result   
**Rating:** R?  
 **Continuity:** MTMTE AU   
**Characters:** Pharma, Tarn, Ambulon, First Aid, Prowl, Ratchet  
 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors.  
 **Motivation (Prompt):** FelixFellow made a gorgeous picture of Pharma kissing Tarn. I had to reason out how this could happen. Things got a bit out of my control.

**[* * * * *]**

Part Thirteen: “Arrival”

**[* * * * *]**

“You’re a pile of scrap metal.”

“I can’t believe you said that to him! He’s gonna **murder** you, mech!”

“No he’s not. Look at him. He didn’t hear a word I said. Ain’t that right, rustbucket?”

Tarn gave a vague grunt of agreement, completely zoned out. Across the arrival terminal, another clump of Autobots flowed out of the gate. His optics searched them one by one and dismissed them as unimportant just as quickly.

“Holy frag.”

“See what I mean? You can say anything to him, and he’ll just mumble something and stand there like a scrapheap. Try it!”

“Uh…”

Red optics locked on the gate again as the disinfectant chamber lit up. Mechs had just entered from the other side and were being scoured down. Maybe this time he’d see the flick of white wings. Familiar and stamped with medical symbols he knew the exact measurements of. He could draw them from memory, he knew them so intimately. More than that, he could picture the wings they were on flicking as he slowly traced over them.

“C’mon, try it. He’s not paying any attention to us.”

“This seems like a bad idea.”

“Probably, but when’s that ever stopped you?”

More Autobots, but not the Autobot he wanted. Craved. Had to have before his spark collapsed in on itself and he burned from the inside out. Primus, please. The queue for arriving ships was as long as Tarn’s arm, but this was getting ridiculous!

“ -- bumper-humping sonnuvaglitch who polishes everybody’s cannon barrels, if ya get my drift, but especially a certain jet’s. You’re just -- “

“No, don’t say that!”

“ -- Pharma’s fragtoy.”

Tarn’s head snapped down, optics suddenly blazing crimson as he went from zoned out to totally focused. “What did you say?”

The two smaller soldiers (who weren’t guards, according to every roster Tarn had seen, but were guards nonetheless) stumbled back, weapons whining online. “Nothing!”

He ignored their weapons and took a menacing step forward. “What did you say about Pharma?” Were they talking slag about his surgeon?

Fate swooped down and saved the mechs’ afts from a vengeful beating. “We said Pharma’s here,” one yelped, pointed desperately.

Tarn whirled around so fast he nearly beaned a passerby with his fusion cannons. “Pharma!”

He didn’t exactly try to keep his voice down, and the tank winced as the sheer, relieved joy he said the name with earned speculative looks from half the arrival terminal crowd. Not that _he_ cared, precisely, but the jet who’d just stepped out of the disinfectant chamber stopped dead in his tracks. Surprise vanished, squashed by an angry glare. That…wasn’t the greeting Tarn had wanted to give. His surgeon could be extremely touchy about how they appeared together in public.

And there he went, striding off toward the nearest exit, wings held stiff and offended. He’d take off as soon as he found open air.

Tarn chased after him. “Wait, wait. Pharma, wait. Wait!”

“Should we follow him?”

“Frag, mech, you really want to see that?”

“…a little.”

“ **No.** ”

**[* * * * *]**


	14. Pt. 14

**Title:** Amnesia  
 **Warning:** Nonconsensual medical procedure (within the context of war), definite dubcon as a result   
**Rating:** R?  
 **Continuity:** MTMTE AU   
**Characters:** Pharma, Tarn, Ambulon, First Aid, Prowl, Ratchet  
 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors.  
 **Motivation (Prompt):** FelixFellow made a gorgeous picture of Pharma kissing Tarn. I had to reason out how this could happen. Things got a bit out of my control.

**[* * * * *]**

Part Fourteen: “Official intentions”

**[* * * * *]**

Tarn didn’t have an office. He had his own quarters, and technically there was a locker in the armory that was his, but he hadn’t been assigned an actual place on base to work in. He was a fighter, not an administrator.

That wasn’t to say that he disliked offices, however. Tarn loved offices. Not the ones where he had to stand at attention in front of the Autobot Second-in-Command or report to the base commander why he was a breem overdue on his last patrol, but offices in general. They all reminded him of the wide, bright office back at Delphi, walls and armor plating reflecting white as sunlight gleamed off the snow outside. There were windows along one whole wall, and awards along another. Tarn had spent entire duty shifts wandering around that office studying the plaques on the wall as wary blue optics covertly observed him. Pharma had been watching closely him for side effects of the amnesia. Since that meant Tarn got to reacquaint himself with his pretty surgeon, the tank hadn’t minded. 

He’d been thrilled, in fact. They’d passed the time talking when Pharma wasn’t filling out filework or sending messages. After the filework was done, the messages sent, and the small talk dried up, well, Tarn had fond memories of that office. Those windows had let in just enough chill to be an excuse for warming up.

He was starting to quite like the surgeon’s office here, too. It didn’t have windows, but that made it more private. That was rapidly becoming important.

He’d shown up simply to greet Pharma, who was working entirely too much for his taste but just enough if First Aid was right. According to the nurse, pompous bossiness meant happiness, or at least as close to it as Pharma got. Tarn didn’t intend to interrupt that happiness. He only wanted to see Pharma.

However, a lingering touch to the back of his surgeon’s hand turned from sweet to fiery in the space of an instant as Tarn’s thumb swept across blue knuckles. So talented. Those hand were capable of miracles. He admired them, and he was utterly breathless that Pharma actually let him make the little gesture of appreciation. Normally, the surgeon would move his hands out of range before Tarn could do more than reach for them.

Not this time. Behind his mask, Tarn’s optics went a soft, velvety red. His fuel pump rate immediately jumped, but he did his best to appear calm and composed. Now was not the time to celebrate. He didn’t know what had earned him this gift, but he would accept it gracefully and remember this moment in exquisite detail later. He touched that blue hand like a worshiper would a treasured relic, and it was nothing but a harmless gesture accompanied by a murmured compliment. That was it. He intended to leave before his presence became a distraction.

The hand under his hand turned and closed one finger at a time around his own, and Tarn was captured more effectively than a mech caught in the teeth of a trap. Those hands were a sinful temptation he resisted poorly on a good day. On bad days, he was lost. 

Today? Totally helpless and loving every moment of it.

“Pharma..?”

“Shh.”

Pharma’s hands could nail life into the dying, but they were also capable of driving his lovers crazy. The much bulkier mech he drew down to sit in the chair was well on his way to madness, but the smaller Autobot had him well under control. He straddled Tarn’s thighs, his own thighs splayed wide. Blue hands cupped either side of a thick neck, fingers digging in behind it as lips sought stopgaps and pins. Pharma kissed under Tarn’s chin, intent on touching every weld mark where mask met jawline. Tarn’s helm rolled back, neck trembling and tense at the firm caress of talented fingers down the cables. One hand slid around to cradle the back of his neck, and the other slowly stroked down to grip the upper plating on his chest. Using that handhold, Pharma pulled himself up to ride his lap, blue pelvic plating rocking against him. 

A jolt of sensation shook the tank, and his aft jerked up as if to meet Pharma halfway. The jet stretched against him, body flush against his chest, and the smooth glide of canopy glass against his lower chest made Tarn groan. It became a deeper, needier sound once Pharma buried his face in the side of his neck, patrician nose nuzzling into the tubing. A gust of hot air came right before an equally hot mouth opened to take in one of the cables that’d previously been fingered to hyper-sensitivity. 

One giant hand slid hesitantly up to cover Pharma’s hand on his upper chest. “You don’t have to do this…I…you’re busy -- “ Tarn’s words ended in a hard vent as Pharma gently bit a coolant tube, teeth rolling it back and forth over his tongue. Slight chewing squished it in the surgeon’s mouth. 

Tarn curled forward, optics off and arm snaking around the slender jet to hold him in place as he shook heavily in response to the prickling pressure. Chemical receptors sampled at the tube. It felt like a rouh scour that fed directly into his sensor network. His hand trembled on top of Pharma’s, restrained from clamping down over the surgeon’s fingers by faltering willpower alone. 

At that moment, Tarn envied Pharma. The medic’s mouth could reduce him to this. If not for the mask welded to his face, Tarn could meet him kiss for kiss, mouths pushed together to trade heat and the intimate caress of tongue and lips. A sick longing rose in him whenever Pharma tossed his head back and flashed that smug, mischievous grin that said the surgeon had him exactly where he wanted. The larger mech had to fight the urge to rip his mask off and duck in to catch that infuriating mouth with his own. Maybe dip down further to set his mouth over Pharma’s nosecone and suck on it _hard_. Slide his mouth down to leave lovebites down the inside of slender thighs.

But no. Tarn had seen his own reflection. The scars visible through the mask made him uneasy about what he looked like underneath. Despite how Pharma licked at the silver welts slicing down below the purple metal, Tarn was afraid his face would repulse his finicky surgeon. Keeper. Lover. 

Losing any of those labels would break the tank. He wanted everything Pharma would grant him, so he’d keep his face hidden for fear of loss.

Besides, the mask made an excellent scare tactic and personal marker. He had a reputation. The Autobot terror with the Decepticons’ own brand for a face made the strongest Decepticons run away upon just seeing him. It was a shame fellow Autobots did that, too. Although not really, because Tarn sort of enjoyed being feared even by his allies.

A slick tongue ran over a scar under his jaw, and Tarn shuddered again. “Do you know how I got that one?” he asked, voice hitching. This was nice -- _unbelievably_ nice -- but he still hoped that Pharma would talk with him. It’d been days since they’d even spoken over comm. lines, and he’d greedily take any opportunity.

“No,” Pharma said shortly. His hand slipped out from under Tarn’s, however, to turn and click the curled back of the forefinger down to circle one of his headlights. Tarn’s interest in conversation short-circuited into a desire to push into that light touch. It drifted lower, fingertips sweeping under his chest plate to find a set of small scars with the ease of long familiarity. “I know where these came from.”

The featherlight pressure stabbed pleasure in almost solid bolt across his internal systems, front to back. “O-oh?” He hadn’t just whimpered. Really, he hadn’t. Tarn’s free hand fumbled up to close around the back of Pharma’s helm, and he held onto the surgeon as if he’d shake to pieces if Pharma didn’t stabilize him. He all but curled around the slender mech. “That’s -- ye-esss. Fr-from saving,” his vocalizer reset, and Tarn’s whole body bucked into the hint of a push Pharma gave against the scars. “Saving me!”

Pharma gentled the raking claw he’d just given Tarn’s midriff into a smooth petting that nonetheless had Tarn squirming. The tank’s systems heated exponentially for every stroke. “Yes. From pulling you open to restart your systems.” His expression fell from slight amusement into a blank mask.

There was a long pause full of the small, stifled sounds of Tarn trying not to beg. What a horrible topic to be aroused during. Pharma was likely brooding and guilty over the memory of Tarn nearly dying out there in the snow, and here Tarn was biting his lip behind his mask because Pharma’s hips were still moving against him. He was an awful person, but shame only fed the flame of need into a hotter burn. 

When Pharma pressed their forehelms together, thoughtfulness colored his face, not guilt. “I could have let you die out there. Some still say I should have.” There was a short, awkward pause as Tarn blinked and the surgeon came back from his thoughts enough to realize how that sounded. “…to spare you, of course. Spare you this.” His hand lifted to wave at nothing, and Tarn whined pitifully that it’d left him.

His body didn’t care about Pharma’s occasionally stunted social skills. Bedside manner on Messatine had meant a limited amount of sympathy and nothing more. Talking about death during a frag didn’t even register. Tarn just wanted that hand to come back and finish what it’d started. 

The rest of him thrummed in complete understanding, however. Ah. Pharma had evidently been getting grief over Tarn’s memory loss again, or even over bargaining with the D.J.D. Perhaps someone had even thrown some guilt at the surgeon over not getting him back intact, despite the absurdity of a clinic full of doctors and nurses going up against Decepticon loyalists. Yes, Pharma had done exactly that in the end with the Red Rust virus, but only after Prowl had left him no other choice. The choice had been to stand by and watch the Autobots be slaughtered, or fight back the only way he could.

If anything, Pharma’s guilt over violating his medical oaths to do no harm should be redirected toward Prowl.

“You listen too much to Ratchet,” Tarn said quietly. He told his body to stop thinking about interfacing, shifting instead of nestling the surgeon close like a guardian offering shelter. “He wasn’t there. You were. You made the choice, and personally, I believe you chose right. I’m not a malfunctioning drone to be offlined, and you gave me the best chance at life you could. I’m thankful for the opportunity.” He couldn’t remember who he’d been, but Pharma had saved him. He had the opportunity to discover who he could be. 

Troubled blue optics peered through his mask. Strangely, the reassuring words made them cloud further. Probably because any word said against Ratchet always raised such conflicted feelings in Pharma. Once a mentor, always a bastion of support or castigation from then on. Tarn wished he could say something to the Autobot Chief Medical Officer about how his overt disapproval of how Pharma had handled the situation on Messatine turned the surgeon into a neurotic mess of singed pride. Medical ethics were compromised by war. Tarn would like to see what Ratchet would have done in the jet’s position, trying save an entire clinic and several mining outposts. _Then_ the mech could talk scrap about Pharma.

Pharma was clearly no longer in the mood for play. Tarn admitted that his disappointment stemmed from a lapful of hot jet gone cold, but Pharma would work himself into a defensive snit. That wouldn’t be any fun, either. He _said_ Ratchet’s disapproval didn’t mean anything, but the surgeon would immerse himself in work for weeks hiding from Tarn, just because the slagging CMO frowned on them. Something about taking advantage of a patient, but seriously? Tarn was a fully functional mech. Memory loss didn’t make him an invalid!

His spark squeezed when Pharma puffed air out of every vent and shifted back in preparation for getting off his lap. 

The hulking tank acted before he thought, bending forward to trap his lighter lover against the desk. Pharma’s optics popped wide, startled, and Tarn chuckled as he pressed his hand under the turbine on the surgeon’s back. “I’ve got you, Doctor.”

The playful words turned surprise to fear in an instant. “Tarn -- !”

Quick! Change of tactics! 

Tarn sank down in the seat, intentionally tuning his vocalizer high and silly. “Mine mine mine.” Pharma jerked a second time, shocked all over again, and Tarn wriggled his fingers. Pinched wires here, a tug on cables here, and he blew forcefully against the Autobot insignia in the middle of Pharma’s chest. An odd sound came out of the smaller mech, and Tarn grinned. He targeted the big transformation gears on Pharma’s side, usually protected by arms and wings but exposed when Tarn wormed his hands under them to tap and tease with his fingers. “Mi~ine.”

“Stop that, you oaf!” Pharma’s voice had gone up an octave, and Tarn stroked out along the leading edge of one winglet while his other hand tweaked at the gear. “No, don’t. No no nonono!”

“Mine,” Tarn sing-songed, and the first burst of surprised laughter from his beloved surgeon nearly earned some from him in return. With difficulty, he kept it down to a face-splitting smile as he concentrated his tickling on the gears. 

Pharma muffled laughter down to undignified snorts and sputtering, but biting his lips to keep it in meant he couldn’t yell at the mech wriggling blunt fingers into sensitive components. Tarn promptly used this freedom as tactic permission to aim for the thin armor on the inside of Pharma’s knees.

Another peal of laughter escaped as kicking and squirming commenced. It did scrap all to help the jet away, especially since once Pharma managed to twist over onto his front, that left him completely defenseless to Tarn’s greater weight and devious plans. 

“Mine mine mine!” the tank crooned through his smile.

Overworked fans rattled, and thrusters turning against lockdown made a screeching _screeee-ee-eep!_ as Pharma writhed under him. “St-stop right thi-i-s instaahahahaha noooo!”

Well, it wasn’t what Tarn had originally wanted to do with Pharma on the desk, but this was just as good. Better, even.

Not once did Pharma deny his claim, and that was the best of all.

**[* * * * *]**

_[ **A/N:** This isn’t a definite End, but I like where this ficlet leaves off, so I’m not PLANNING on adding more. The way these things go, I probably will.]_


	15. Pt. 15

**Title:** Amnesia  
 **Warning:** Equivalent of mind control.  
 **Rating:** PG-13.  
 **Continuity:** MTMTE AU  
 **Characters:** Pharma, Tarn, Constructicons.  
 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors.  
 **Motivation (Prompt):** Fic extension prompts on Tumblr.

 

**[* * * * *]**   
_Part 15_   
**[* * * * *]**

 

“No,” Pharma murmured to him, one hand rising to cup the side of Tarn’s helm. He didn’t even look up from the datapad he was making such a show of studying. Everyone around them was laser-focused on the trial, but Pharma had taken his place in the audience with every appearance of disinterest. “Don’t react. He doesn’t deserve your reaction.”

Tarn melted into the contact, especially since it necessitated his beloved surgeon leaning against his side. He didn’t mind using his size and reputation to intimidate the Autobots in the audience into giving them a bigger than normal space to sit in, but he did regret that it allowed Pharma more room to spread out. Now the flyer pressed into side in a casual slouch, legs crossed as he read from the datapad in one hand. His other hand turned Tarn’s helm back toward him. Where Tarn’s attention belonged, of course. He wasn’t reluctant at all to refocus on his surgeon.

Pharma let his hand linger. It was a possessive gesture meant to rub in the brute power so delicately controlled by a flicker of his fingers. Tarn’s optics dimmed offline in total unconcern of where they were or what they were here to watch. The only thing he cared about was the flyer he adored.

If Megatron continued intently staring at him from down on the courtroom floor, Tarn hardly noticed.

**[* * * * *]**

They watched him from afar for days before daring to approach. It was irritating but not a threat. He was used to being stared at, rude as it was.

Being approached was rarer. He stopped what he was doing -- hauling rubble from what would be the medical center -- to stand and wait as soon as he spotted lurid green in his vicinity. Interesting that they would risk coming near him. The Autobots here in what had been Iacon weren’t exactly friendly, but they had adjusted to seeing him around. The Decepticons scattered like scared glitchmice the moment he turned a corner. This was the first time any of the ‘Cons had gone toward instead of away from him, although he wasn’t entire sure that the Constructicons counted as Decepticons anymore.

There were a lot of mechs who fell in that unknown category, nowadays. Call him prejudiced, but he preferred ex-‘Cons to NAILS. Pharma came back from working with Flatline mildly annoyed by the Decepticon medic, but the two head medics of Iacon agreed on most issues, probably due to Flatline’s apathy toward 99% of everything outside of whatever patient he was currently treating. Flatline let Pharma take control of the makeshift clinic, and that was the end of it. Offering healthcare to both factions and former members of both factions wasn’t a problem, and they worked well enough together on that. It was the sheer processor-ache-inducing _politics_ of offering healthcare to NAILS that left Pharma snarling.

Pharma did well in dealing with politicians. Tarn knew that. Pharma was clever, experienced, and just plain that slagging good at his job.

Plus, Pharma liked him to act as his secretary whenever Starscream started pulling that _’I am Cybertron’s new leader; I shall now tell you how to run the medibay’_ scrap, just to scare the power-hungry Air Commander off. Tarn took a rather sadistic joy in politely looming during meetings. Nobody told his surgeon how to operate. He’d made it clear to Starscream that any policies that affected healthcare in Iacon should be run by his surgeon first lest there be a visit from a displeased secretary in Starscream’s near future.

It’d been a point made with the lightest of touches. He’d tracked down Rattrap in his altmode and made roadkill of him, then dumped the flattened rat at Starscream’s doorstep. Very subtle. Much threat. Wow.

Soon after, Jazz had invited him and Pharma to the new Old Maccadam’s Oil House for a show. Tarn didn’t think the two things were unrelated. He’d always gotten the feeling Blurr wanted nothing to do with him, but that was before Starscream attempted to dictate terms to Pharma. Now he was meeting Pharma -- and Ratchet, but Tarn didn’t resent sharing his surgeon, he _didn’t_ \-- at the Oil House after his surgeon’s shift was up, and Blurr would serve them personally. Jazz would likely stop by their table to chat before his set. Pharma would probably tell him to go over and talk to Swindle tonight. Tarn would spend half the night attempted not to scare the skeevy little conmech away while getting him to admit he wanted to ask Blurr out on a date. 

Tarn had no idea how he’d become the go-to advisor for Decepticons and ex-‘Cons eyeing up Autobots, but he was coming to hate his reputation as a smooth talker. It was resulting in some seriously unnerving conversations for everyone involved.

And apparently the, uh, ‘love tank’ advisor shtick had spread, because here was the Prowl Fan Club. He doubted they were here to consult with him over the clinic blueprints. 

They picked their way through the ruins with the experience of builders and the caution of soldiers. He didn’t bother pretending he wasn’t watching them closely. They couldn’t be foolish enough to attack him. He didn’t think they had reason to, in any case. That left a social visit, and there weren’t many conversational topics mechs like them would voluntarily approach a mech like him about.

A smile pulled at the corner of his mouth as he looked at their studiously neutral faces. Oh, he dearly hoped Prowl still had him under surveillance. If the Constructicons were here to ask his advice for courting prickly, brilliant Autobots under adverse circumstances, this would make for a gloriously awkward conversation for that stuck-up glitchhead to analyze. Tarn would be certain to give them the best advice _ever._

**[* * * * *]**


	16. Pt. 16

**Title:** Amnesia  
 **Warning:** Equivalent of mind control.  
 **Rating:** PG-13.  
 **Continuity:** MTMTE AU  
 **Characters:** Pharma, Tarn.  
 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors.  
 **Motivation (Prompt):** Kinkfest 2016 prompt on Tumblr: “Humiliation kink.”

**[* * * * *]**

_Part 16_

**[* * * * *]**

He remembered so little.

Flashes, mostly. Pictures like afterimages here and there, usually when he was upset or tired. The irregularity of his memories were the worst part. Nothing his damaged archives salvaged ever made sense, disconnected bits of his life that left him rattled, unsettled, and restless for days. If he could predict an onset of remembering, he’d avoid the stimulus. It was easier when he didn't remember. His guards always seemed to know when he’d had a flashback, and there was an inevitable barrage of tests he had to take afterward. Prowl told him all the prodding was preventative medical care to prevent a relapse or some kind of shock-collapse, but Tarn had his suspicions.

Rung’s explanation was much the same, but Tarn believed him more. Especially after the psychotherapist accompanied him to one of the post-memory appointments. Tarn _liked_ Rung. Not only did the mech discuss classic literature and music with him, but he’d stopped the medics from excessive prodding and sternly limiting the number of tests to a reasonable few that actually made sense. Tarn understood processor stress-tests. He didn’t want to lose his memories again.

Still, he had to wonder why Prowl had him watched so closely. It made Tarn think something had happened on Messatine. Beyond everything _else_ the coldsparked coghead had set up to happen, of course. Hmmph. It’d be a long time before Tarn forgave Prowl that.

But Prowl had power, political and military leverage. He’d engineered the downfall of the Decepticon Justice Division by knowingly placing Pharma in mortal danger on Messatine. He stood at Optimus Prime’s right hand. As much as Tarn liked Rung, he wasn’t fool enough to believe Prowl wasn’t manipulating them both. Tarn believed Prowl didn’t want him to remember something, so he couldn’t confide in Rung about the strange memory flashes. He didn’t dare.

Seeing Megatron on trial was the worst time. Tarn's head pounded afterward, an aching empty processor pain where damaged files refused to be recalled. Even the soothing presence of his precious surgeon couldn't stop him from trying to _remember_. He should have been content to be with Pharma, positively euphoric that Pharma was at his side for once, but watching Megatron renounce the Decepticons had felt like tearing out his own fuel pump. 

"Did I know him?" he asked Pharma, wretchedly unhappy, and the frown on Pharma's face hurt his spark but he _had to know_. "Did he order my torture? Did he speak to me?" Blue optics looked away from him, and Tarn fell to his knees beside Pharma's chair, fingers clutching the surgeon's arm in need. 

Big hands made careless dents, and fear spread across Pharma's face as Tarn leaned into his lap, the massive tankformer caging him in as he pleaded, "Tell me, please!"

Rage blotted out fear in a thin but effective cover. Pharma erupted from the chair, throwing off Tarn's too-tight hold as if it'd burnt him. "Don't touch me!"

"I'm sorry, I -- Pharma, I just -- " Tarn nearly scrambled back, realizing too late how he’d hurt the comparatively frail flyer.

“Don’t ever do that! Not ever, do you understand?!” The surgeon regained his footing on the other side of the chair, reassured by the barrier, however small. He stood tall, wings hiked high in indignant rage but quivering in reaction he couldn’t quite hide. 

Tarn stayed down, letting him take control. Regret and fear surged in Tarn’s aching head. The painful waves made it difficult to concentrate, and he squinted up at Pharma. “…yes. I understand. I apologize for -- “

Still standing behind the safety of the chair, Pharma bent forward to spit angry words. "Back before the war, a mech like you would lose his hands if he dared touch me!"

He blinked, awareness crossing his optics, and he straightened abruptly. 

Tarn didn't know what his surgeon had suddenly realized. He was busy having his own epiphany at that moment. The words had hit his mind as though they meant something. Something important, something worth remembering, something just out of reach. Corrupted files recalled to error messages by the sight of Megatron on trial opened and crashed in quick succession. Each tagged file triggered the next, a cascading failure in his processor. Something important, something about hands, about losing hands. Something about Megatron, his memories, a past he didn't remember, they all mean _something_ \-- 

A caress as light as a snowflake traced around his audio, and Tarn jerked back to the present, optics wide behind his mask. Surrounded by a halo of shattered memory, Pharma crouched before him, one hand outstretched. The shutters around the surgeon’s optics were tight, defensive fear held at bay, but the surgeon wore a crooked grin. It transfixed Tarn. 

A mere hint of pressure from the hand on his helm made him bow his head, and Pharma purred, "No hands. I expect you'll have to get inventive," in the audio he pet with fine fingers.

And everything Tarn didn't remember vanished beneath what he did.

**[* * * * *]**


End file.
